Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!pacbell!pacbell.com!mips!apple!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!mcsun!ukc!mucs!liv-cs!mdb
From: mdb@anduin.cs.liverpool.ac.uk
Newsgroups: uk.misc,eunet.followup,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Internet routing Europe - USA -} Europe...
Message-ID: <1990Sep7.112346.16949@anduin.cs.liverpool.ac.uk>
Date: 7 Sep 90 10:23:46 GMT
References: <1990Aug30.091435.1982@ircam.ircam.fr <6190@vanuata.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>  <1990Sep6.142623.4559@ibmpcug.co.uk>
Organization: Computer Science, Liverpool University
Lines: 37

In article <1990Sep6.142623.4559@ibmpcug.co.uk>, dylan@ibmpcug.co.uk (Matthew Farwell) writes:
> 
>>b. can you see companies which aren't even on janet because it provides
>>   security problems wanting to go onto internet?
> 
> It depends.  Companies who are terminally afraid of security problems
> will never connect to a network like janet.  On the other hand, if
> connecting up to a network directly, (esp. the internet for
> international companies) reduces their costs substantially in terms of
> mail, news etc., then they might be persuaded to do so.  I know this
> particular company would love to be connected directly to janet, and I
> suspect I know of a few others too.
> 
There is of course no reason why "sensitive" computers should be connected
to the network at all.  Most Universities have computers which contain
information that they do not wish to become public, and hold it on
computers that are not Janet registered (or only for mail), and only
allow data transfer when it is controlled from the secure end. I believe
this is also how the military deal with their security problems.

Calling random addresses does not help, as it is relatively easy for
the secure machine to ignore all network calls that it is not expecting.
All this does not do a lot for the free interchange of information,
which is why the academic networks have proved so successful.
One of the major fears of increased commercial involvement in Janet
(apart from the obvious "political" ones already discussed)
is that companies' paranoia over University hackers will force
unwarrented general levels of security on all sites,
which will have an adverse effect on th whole ademic community.

It really is the responsibility of the host site management
to ensure that the internal and external security of its
computers is adequate for the purposes for which they are used.

Martin Beer,
Dept. of Computer Science,
University of Liverpool.