On Mon, 7 Jun 1993 11:53:33 -0700 <Ben.Goren@ASU> said: >I just had a few notes posted to one of my lists about a rumour that >there's a plan to limit access to the Internet to only a few >government-sponsored research institutions. I *hope* I stomped on it >quickly enough, but I figured it would be best to warn the rest of you that >there's another one about, and that it might be a good idea to try to limit >the damage this one does. BTW: by "stomped," I mean that I sent a note telling >everybody to drop the whole thing, including "me too's," unless you've got >proof positive. I suppose if it gets out of hand, holding or moderating the >list might be appropriate. Here's what I've collected about the "future-of-the-Internet". (Small apology for its length (500 lines), but this *is* the place for it.) <clip> Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions,news.future,alt.online-service, alt.internet.services,comp.mail.misc From: [log in to unmask] (Daniel Kohn) Subject: How Big Is the Internet? Summary: How many people have e-mail access to the Internet? Keywords: Internet,size,very big,RFC1296 Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1993 05:13:02 GMT Organization: Swarthmore College Actually, my question is: How many people can send e-mail to and receive it from a fully connected Internet site? I am not as naive as this question makes me sound. I have read RFC 1296 and updated it with figures from report-9304.doc located at ftp.nisc.sri.com. The numbers from April say that there are 1,486,000 hosts on the Internet. (Read RFC 1296 if you want to haggle about the technical difficulties and imprecisions involved in this count.) Now let's take an even bigger leap of faith and assume that there are on average 10 users per host. This figure is suggested in report-9301.doc, but I would love a better estimate if anyone thinks they have a good reason for one. So, that brings us to an estimate of about 14 million people with TCP/IP access to the Internet in April 1993. Unfortunately, that doesn't answer my question. The problem is, we now need to estimate the number of people with e-mail access to any network with an e-mail gateway to the Internet. So, how many active subscribers does Compuserve have? How many active AppleLink accounts are there? (At least we don't need to worry about Prodigy :-) But I am looking for a serious answer. Can anyone suggest a way to estimate the number of people with gateway access to Internet e-mail? Don't forget the problem of double counting (e.g., I have Internet and AppleLink accounts). Lastly, how can one estimate how many of those people are in the U.S. and how many are international? Please try to to keep flames to a minimum. I realize the impossibility of doing an exact count, so all I'm looking for is a realistic, order-of-magnitude estimate and a defendable methodology for reaching it. If you have a guess at how to make that estimate, please do reply. <clip> Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions,news.future,alt.internet.services, comp.mail.misc Subject: Re: How Big Is the Internet? From: [log in to unmask] (Anthony Rosati) Date: 7 Jun 93 04:49:58 -0400 Daniel Kohn ([log in to unmask]) wrote: : Please try to to keep flames to a minimum. I realize the : impossibility of doing an exact count, so all I'm looking for is a realistic, : order-of-magnitude estimate and a defendible methodology for reaching it. : If you have a guess at how to make that estimate, please do reply. Let's be honest... you are asking very important questions, to which I too would like answers. With both the NSF proposal and Title VI of Senate Bill 4 both advocating shunting the entire Internet to "commercial vendors" (nee: "Baby Bells", as well as prohibitions against ANY governmental entity (federal, state, or local) from running a network (claimed as "unfair competition"), we must prepare for a heated battle. Already, the Baby bells and their commercial provider colleagues have sneaked this legislative language into Senate Bill 4 without a floor debate. It is up to all of us to deluge our Senators & Congressmen with faxes, phone calls and letters protesting this new shift that would either isolate, fiscally disfranchise or significantly reduce the traffic on the internet. It should be no surprise to anyone that the reason the internet is as large as it is is because of the minimal intrusion of greed or avarice into its operation. This trend could cripple the entire network movement in America. With the way the Bell companies traditionally deal with services and their attention to fiscal balance, we will see the Internet as we know it disappear. Compuserve, GEnie, America On-Line and the others have an infinitely small base more than likely because they impose a fiscal barrier to involvement, whether it is their hourly rates or their absence in many market areas. The Internet has not only increased communication between people, but significantly improved intellectual productivity in education and industry. +-------------------------+---------------------------------------------------+ | Anthony V. Rosati | Information Exchange Coordinator and Member, The | | Department of Chemistry | Board of Directors, The National Association of | | Georgetown University | Graduate - Professional Students 1993-1994 | | Washington, DC 20057 +---------------------------------------------------+ | (202) 687-5610 | **** Email 1: [log in to unmask] **** | | (202) 298-9056 | **** Email 2: [log in to unmask] **** | +-------------------------+---------------------------------------------------+ <clip> From: [log in to unmask] (Adam Cody Coggins) Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions,news.future,alt.online-service, alt.internet.services,comp.mail.misc Subject: Repost of Internet threat info (was Re: How Big Is the Internet?) Summary: long collection of posts Date: 7 Jun 93 16:01:48 GMT Warning: this account expires June 30 For those looking for more info, here is some that was forwarded to me. Apologies if this is a rehash of things already seen here or if you feel it is outside the group's charter; I rarely read this particular group. <clip> Date: Mon, 07 Jun 93 09:39:31 EST From: Carl Dassbach <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: threat to internet in America Attached is the information that I have readily available. Sorry, I have not been able to edit it. I have been swamped with requests. <sub-clip> From: "Martha E. Gimenez (303) 492-7080" <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: THE FUTURE OF INTERNET/OUR FUTURE X-Comment: PROGRESSIVE SOCIOLOGISTS NETWORK Dear PSNers: So far, we have been enjoying the wonderful possibilities for exchanging ideas and building communities offered by Internet without asking ourselves how it is that we can actually avail ourselves of this technology. The time has come to become aware of the dangers to our unrestrained use of Internet. In fact, the future of PSN and countless other lists is in jeopardy. So far, Internet has been subsidized by the government and is, for all practical purposes, a public good which can be put to a variety of uses within and outside academia. As the message forwarded below indicates, there is a bill in congress which is intended to end government subsidies and give control of Internet to the telephone companies. Internet will become a commodity, prices will rise, many universities and colleges already constrained by budget cuts might give it up while those that keep it will charge the users. This will keep students and underpaid faculty without grants out of the networks and many academic and political LISTSERVs like PSN might have to disappear in virtual space :-( sigh.... So, if you enjoy PSN and other lists, please write to your representatives in congress highlighting the importance of keeping Internet as a public good. This is not only something useful for us, academics living in the wealthy "North;" it helps keep progressive social thought alive in the poorer countries and facilitates communications among workers organizations and political activists (you might consider joining Labor-L for more information about that) , something which is of vital importance at a time when regional economic agreements like NAFTA are changing the economic and political space. <sub-clip> > Date: Tue, 18 May 1993 17:40:21 CDT > Sender: Project Gutenberg Email List <[log in to unmask]> > From: Keith Dennis <[log in to unmask]> > Subject: Future of the Internet? > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > Dear Professor Hart, > you may wish to alert the readership of Gutenberg that the Internet as > we know it may be shortly destroyed by our Congress. A bill written > by Rep. Rick Boucher (D, Virginia), chair of the House Science > Subcommittee will remove government subsidies and place control with > the telephone companies. A likely consequence will be a substantial > increase of cost to universities with the likelihood that some will > drop out or charge for use by individuals. This not only threatens > Project Gutenberg, but all other academic uses of the nets. Perhaps > it is time to notify our representatives of the value of the > Internet for educational, scientific, and other scholarly uses. > > Additional information can be found in "Colleges and Telephone > Companies Battle over the Future of the Internet", page A25, > The Chronicle of Higher Education, vol. 39 #37, May 19, 1993. > > Gustavo J. Llavaneras S. University of California - Berkeley > [log in to unmask] Knowledge-Based Computer Aided Design > [log in to unmask] > [log in to unmask] Universidad Central de Venezuela - Caracas <sub-clip> Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1993 16:41:32 CDT Sender: History of the Iberian Peninsula <[log in to unmask]> From: LHNELSON --UKANVM <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Internet and Commerical Operators. Thanks for the citation, Carl. I checked it and the follow-up article (Chronicle of Higher Education, 26 May, p. A17, entitled "NSF releases long awaited plan to reduce U.S. role in the Internet"). Basically, the National Science Foundation maintains the NSFNET, which is the "trunk line" to which all of the regional networks are connected to form Internet as a whole. The government provides $11.5 million annually to support NSFnet, and another $7,000,000 to subsidize the local networks. The local networks' other income comes from institutional fees (up to $40,000 per year for a big school) that depend up the institution's size and not the volume of Internet traffic that it generates. The current arrangements for the operation of the NSFnet come to an end on 30 April 1994, and NSF wants a much improved NSFnet with increases in transmission speed of 300-500 %. It intends to let out contracts for the establishment and the operation of NSFnet to private companies under government contract and intends to end its subsidies to local networks over a four-year period after that. The Clinton administration is reportedly in favor of direct grants to schools to defray their expenses rather than doing so indirectly through the local networks. The communications companies wish to divorce NSFnet from other Internet operations. Specifically, they want NSFnet to be reserved for high-speed communications between the several super-computer sites that crunch data for the sciences. They would be allowed to establish a privately controlled and operated "trunk line" for other Internet uses and to charge local networks for accessing that line. EDUCOM, a consortium of educational telecommunication "consumers," estimate that this arrangement would probably raise their costs from 10%-30%, but are more apprehensive that the private owners would turn from flat rate fees to charging either by traffic or on-line time. In point of fact, although not mentioned in either article, divisions of the telephone company have tried to establish traffic charges, in some states, based upon the volume of information transferred. These proposals have been struck down on the basis that the volume of traffic per unit time has no effect upon the companies' costs and thus should have no effect upon their charges. If the companies operate a trunk line designed for information transfer and can appeal to the national rather than state governments, their requests might be viewed quite differently. Such a development would affect the Internet and our use of it quite dramatically. NSF has announced its plans, but it is not clear what relationship there is between these and the discussions in Congressional committees. At any rate, Carl has brought up a serious and pressing issue, and I thank him for doing so. Some of you, both users in the United States and those in other countries, may wish to express your opinion of this situation. Fortunately, the White House has just completed its e-mail system and has announced its wish that people communicate with it. I will search out that announcement and post it later for your information and for the e-addresses it contains. Lynn Nelson, Department of History, University of Kansas <sub-clip> Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1993 15:37:17 -0600 Sender: [log in to unmask] From: Stephen Wolff <[log in to unmask]> Subject: INTERNET X-Comment: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK X-Listserver-Version: 6.0 -- UNIX ListServer by Anastasios Kotsikonas This is the response to my earlier posting from the responsible office and person at NSF. Okay, we all know that INTERNET was never really free but I can't help observing that this sounds like bureaucratic "double talk" which is, as we know "double plus ungood". ----------------------------------------------------------------- This is the responsible office in the NSF, and I am the responsible person. There is no "plan to limit free use of INTERNET..." In the first place, there is no such thing as "free use of INTERNET". Each and every institution with Internet access pays a service provider real money every year for the institution's connection. Most institutions do not however trickle those charges down to users, but pay for them out of general operating funds. Service providers, most of whom serve a limited geographical area, attain national and international coverage via the NSFNET BackBone Service, which has hitherto been centrally funded by an award to Merit, Inc. and provided to the regional service providers at no charge. Since the beginning of the current NSFNET Backbone Service in 1987, a lively and competitive commercial market in Internet carriage has emerged, with multiple vendors offering robust, nationwide, commodity-level services. Continued centralized funding of a Backbone Service by the Foundation is no longer justified, as it would place the Federal government in direct competition with the private sector. Awards made under the currently active solicitation will include awards to regional networks to purchase backbone service on the open market. That is, the NSF will switch from supplier funding to user funding. The NSF is committed to continuity of network service to the research and education community; we will take whatever steps are necessary to assure it. ----------------------------------------------------------------- SOME NAMES AND ADDRESSES AT THE NSF AS WELL AS A QUASI-OFFICIAL STATEMENT FROM AN "INFORMED SOURCE" AT THE NSF. 8. National Science Foundation A. Nico Habermann Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation for the Computer and Information Science Engineering Directorate Chairperson Federal Networking Council National Science Foundation 1800 G Street, N.W., Room 306 Washington, DC 20550 Tel. No. 202/357-7936 Fax No. 202/357-0320 E-Mail: [log in to unmask] E-Mail: [log in to unmask] Sherrye McGregor Policy Office grants@nsf [log in to unmask] Dr. Stephen S. Wolff Director of the Divison of Networking and Communications Research and Infrastructure National Science Foundation 1800 G Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20550 Voice: (202) 357-9717 E-mail: [log in to unmask] Jane Caviness Deputy Director Washington, DC 20550 Division for Networking and Communications Research and Infrastructure National Science Foundation 1800 G Street, N.W. Voice: (202) 357-9717 The National Science Foundation (NSF) supports advanced fundamental research in HPCC technologies and their application to science and engineering problems. While coordinating the NREN component, NSF is upgrading NSFNET backbone services, deploying networking information services, increasing network connections, and expanding gigabit research and development. NSF super-computer centers are collaborating towards a "meta-center." NSF enables coordinated approaches to Grand Challenge problems, and addresses algorithm and software technology issues. Expanded IITA research includes distributed databases and digital libraries, multimedia computing and visualization, and image recognition. The NSF still sees these needs in the networking community: providing a national routing authority, providing a set of network access point, and assistant with inter-regional traffic. NSF will support mid-levels, but will push for them to become self-supporting. NSF will continue to work toward a network for research and education. <sub-clip> Date: Sat, 5 Jun 93 03:37:12 EST From: Ellie Valentine <[log in to unmask]> NAMES AND ADDRESSES FOR NSF NETWORK SERVICE CENTER July 8, 1992 NNSC Section 6.2, Page 4 NNSC - NSF Network Service Center Address: NNSC Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. Systems and Technologies Division 10 Moulton Street, Mail Stop 6/3B Cambridge, MA 02138 Email: [log in to unmask] Phone: (617) 873-3400 FAX: (617) 873-5620 Description The NSF Network Service Center (NNSC) is sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The purpose of the NNSC is to collect, maintain and distribute information about NSFNET and provide assistance to NSFNET end-users. The objective of the NNSC project is to make general information <sub-clip> Date: Sat, 5 Jun 1993 10:10:11 CDT Sender: HTECH-L History of Technology Discussion <[log in to unmask]> From: Stuart Feffer <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: INTERNET DIAMOND argues, in favor of a shift of the Internet backbone to the private sector, that the private sector has greater incentive to cut costs than does a government provider of services. He also questions the propriety of taxpayer subsidies of frivolous traffic over the network. It is also true, however, that the private sector has a *much* greater incentive to raise *revenues*, and this is the source of the potential down-side for users of the network. The fear is that private service providers will want to begin billing by the message-unit, even though the cost of operating the backbone is *not* proportional to usage -- the marginal cost of one more e-mail message being effectively zero. That virtually all of the costs of operating the network are fixed, also means that the argument about taxpayer subsidies of non-essential uses is spurious. The bandwidth is *already* there, and needed to handle peak usage requirements and the requirements of the heaviest users. But there is still bandwidth leftover for low priority traffic -- allowing users like use to piggyback (effectively) for free. A private operator will naturally want to squeeze every dime of revenue out of every possible source, and that will almost definitely include uses like ours which add effectively nothing to costs. <sub-clip> The NSF solicitation for private organizations to run INTERNET is can be found at the following address: GOPHER.NSF.GOV. - LOGIN "public" NSF document number - NSF9352 Papers on the privatization of INTERNET are available via anonymous FTP from: GOPHER.ECON.LSA.UMICH.EDU in: /pub/Papers ********************************************************************** * Carl H.A. Dassbach BITNET: DASSBACH@MTUS5 * * Dept. of Social Sciences INTERNET: [log in to unmask] * * Michigan Technological Univ. PHONE: (906)487-2115 * * Houghton, MI 49931 FAX: (906)487-2468 * * U.S.A. * ********************************************************************** <clip> From: [log in to unmask] (Jim Carroll) Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions,news.future,alt.online-service, alt.internet.services,comp.mail.misc Subject: Re: How Big Is the Internet? Keywords: Internet,size,very big,RFC1296 Date: 7 Jun 93 14:21:6 GMT Organization: JACC Look for the publication "EMMS", Electronic Mail and MicroSystems, which summarizes the numbers of commercial vendors and other mail types, many of which are accessible from Internet mail. Note that EMMS is asking the same question (in their last issue) and promises to summarize the responses they get. I can give you a contact number for the publication if you require. I estimate 50million if you factor in all commercial systems, and the companies that are plugged into them....even if for some the addressing is a challenge. <clip> Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1993 13:59:15 ET Sender: Bitnet/Internet Help Resource <[log in to unmask]> From: Marcelle McGhee <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Free Internet Threatened A friend of mine sent me a hardcopy memo she received on the TQM list. It was posted by someone on the CIRCPLUS list. To summarize, the memo says that the NSF is receiving pressure from large telecommunications interests to limit the "free" access to the internet, to "scientists transmitting huge files of data" and to begin charging others who use the Internet for e-mail etc... purposes. Has anyone heard about this, or is it just another rumor? I would be interested in finding out more about it. I am trying to find out the source of the memo and will post any info I receive that seems credible. <clip>