IP: more on 10 choices that were critical to the Net'ssuccess

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow" <geoff () iconia com>
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 11:40:23 +0200
To: <farber () cis upenn edu>
Cc: "Dan Gillmor" <dgillmor () sjmercury com>
Subject: RE: 10 choices that were critical to the Net'ssuccess

Very Prominently missing from the list:

THE LACK OF SETTLEMENTS($), despite Al Weis's and The Nice Guys Team at
Advanced Network and Services(ANS) Best Efforts to "force" their
introduction.

So, also add THE FOUNDING OF THE CIX -- The Commercial Internet Exchange as
The List.

($) What are SETTLEMENTS?  Say, for example, you place a long distance phone
call, say from Prague to San Francisco, a SETTLEMENT is involved: CESKY
TELECOM(1) gets a portion for transporting My Voice to an "over the puddle"
(ocean) long-distance provider(2) that lands the call in the U.S. Then,
another provider(3), like your local telephone company, takes over to get
the call To You.  As a result, each of these provider(s) -- Local
Originating(1), Long-Distance/Over-The-Ocean(2) & End Terminating(3) each
get "a cut" of the costs incurred for carrying the call.  This is called a
SETTLEMENT -- where you divvy up the pie between all who were involved in
the transaction.

When ANS entered The Scene, since the NSFNET backbone was carrying just
about all of the "long distance" traffic between the regional Internet
providers (such as BARRNET in the SF Bay Area) as well as the budding
commercial providers such as UUNET, Anterior Technology (my company at the
time, which was the 2nd commercial internet provider), then PSINET, et al
entered the game ANS tried Very Very Hard to force all us new, small,
budding guys to engage in telco like settlements to PAY THEM for the traffic
we put across their just-handed to them network.  While these settlements
were the normal in X.25/X.75 telco commercial networks, the budding Internet
(industry) adopted a "sender keeps all" method... where you paid your local
providers and they kept it all for themselves.  These nascent commercial
providers all started to connect to the CIX where it was possible to freely
exchange traffic without SETTLEMENTS.  I believe that if ANS had succeeded
in their Darth Vader ways and means and managed to force a SETTLEMENTS model
on The Net in the early days it would have vastly constricted The Oxygen
Flow and growth would have been inappropriately retarded, stymied and
stunted.  I'm sure others like Rick Adams, Gordon Cook, Dave Farber et al
can provide more of the gory details of the Up Close and Personal trench
warfare that was taking place during these times.  But we should not forget
that we almost Lost It to avarice over community and cooperation and The
Net, as we know it, would have been a very different place.  Thank heavens
Good prevailed over Evil.

Geoff

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
geoff.goodfellow () iconia com * Prague - CZ * telephone +420 603 706 558
"success is getting what you want & happiness is wanting what you get"
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/01/biztech/articles/17drop.html
http://www.tapsns.com/members-bio/geoff-goodfellow.shtml



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