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From: amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Dial up access to Internet facilities
Message-ID: <26630F61.2A9@intercon.com>
Date: 30 May 90 00:10:09 GMT
Article-I.D.: intercon.26630F61.2A9
References: <9005270423.AA19852@psi.com> <1990May25.163528.14300@ameristar> <57875@bu.edu.bu.edu>
Sender: usenet@intercon.com (USENET The Magnificent)
Reply-To: amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker)
Organization: InterCon Systems Corporation, Herndon, VA
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In article <57875@bu.edu.bu.edu>, kwe@bu-it.bu.edu (Kent England) writes:
> I see a definite interest on the part of commercial organizations
> wishing to join the research and education (R&E) Internet, but I see much
> less interest from them in joining a purely commercial internet service-
> they don't seem to understand who they would be able to talk to on a purely
> commercial internet.  Come to think of it, neither do I.

In our case, at least, one of the reasons that a connection to what you call
the R&E Internet would/will be so valuable is that a lot of the people that
we want to communicate with are already there.  I suspect that the companies
that are currently most interested in the Internet fall into one of two
categories:

 1. Companies whose customer base is largely already on the Internet.
    TCP/IP vendors, supercomputer vendors, and so on.  We fall into this
    category, for example.

 2. Companies that want to reap the benefits of wide-area networking
    without having to develop their own infrastructure.  Some bicoastal
    computer corporations fall into this category, for example.

As the number of companies in category 2 increase, the perceived value
of a purely commercial internet will also increase.  At some point, also,
commercial service providers may increase its value by allowing it to
mediate services that the R&E Internet cannot or by policy will not support.

--
Amanda Walker
--
This posting is cursed.  As you read it you will be confuset by ther
printeb wertz.  Yer intelijen will vabni ..... XRT! XRT!