Newsgroups: comp.misc
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!maytag!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: Internet: The origins
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 90 02:40:14 GMT
Message-ID: <1990Oct18.024014.11113@looking.on.ca>
References: <1990Oct14.055739.7971@nmt.edu>

There's a lot of misunderstanding here.

"The Internet" is a somewhat amorphous structure, consisting of tons of
different tcp/ip networks.  The NIC assigns network numbers and domains, but
that is about the only true central authority.  (NIC = Network Information
Center at SRI)

The networks start small, at companies, schools and labs.  They are often
hooked into regionals.

The primary national interconnector, however, is the NSFnet, paid for by
the tax dollars of the NSF.  It provides raw bandwidth, services, etc., mostly
to regionals.  The education-based regionals also follow NSFnet's lead in
making policy, but some, like NYSERNET (now part of the commercial PSInet) do
not.

The NSF didn't run the InterNet itself.  It contracted to the MERIT consortium
to run it.

Now MERIT has subcontracted to a new firm called Advanced Networking & Services
(ANS) to provide the actual services.   ANS is a non-profit corp created with
10 megabucks from IBM and MCI.  (Guess which carrier provides the data
paths?)

ANS has grander plans, however, and will get in (eventually -- there is some
question of how this relates to their non-profit charter) to commercial
networking whole hog, providing not just NSFnet services, but their own
commercial net, competing with outfits like PSI and UUNet Technologies.
(UUNet Technologies, which runs a TCP network called Alternet, is the the
for-profit parallel company to the non-profit UUNet communications, which
runs the uunet relay machine.)

There.  It starts to get interesting now.  We all get to wait and see.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473