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From: droms@SOL.BUCKNELL.EDU (Ralph E. Droms)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: building an interstate (data) highway with no roadmaps
Message-ID: <9106181314.AA06036@sol.bucknell.edu>
Date: 18 Jun 91 13:14:44 GMT
References: <9106171742.AA26647@phloem.uoregon.edu>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: droms@bucknell.edu
Organization: The Internet
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jqj@duff.uoregon.edu (JQ Johnson) writes:

   From my perspective, EMV's important point is that there is no equivalent
   of a AAA (or any other national Automobile Association) to provide travel
   information services, personalized maps, triptics, towing services, motel
   certifications, etc. for normal people (rather than hackers like us). 
   Perhaps what we need is a users' group that is tied to international
   networking rather than to a particular computer vendor or even to a
   particular internet or particular protocol stack.  "American Networking
   Association" anyone?

Might I also suggest a 'Consumers Reports' for the Internet, with
unbiased evaluations of protocol implementations, hardware components,
etc.?  There is a lot of experience and expertise pass around by
word-of-mouth; we could use a more formal delivery system for those
non-networking folks who don`t attend IETF meetings or subscribe to
TCP-IP.

How does all of this tie into the 'The Internet Society'?

- Ralph Droms                 Computer Science Department
  droms@bucknell.edu          323 Dana Engineering
                              Bucknell University
  (717) 524-1145              Lewisburg, PA 17837