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BETWEEN WATER AND ICE:
THE FORMATIVE TRANSITION FROM THE NSFNETTO THE MODERN INTERNET
Daniel Selsam2008
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© 2008 Daniel Selsam
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CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.................................................................................................4
INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................5
1. Background: The ARPANET Transitions to TCP/IP................................10
2. CSNET: The NSF’s First Major Computer Network is Simple andSuccessful..................................................................................................12
3. NSFNET: The NSF Builds a General-Purpose Network for the ResearchCommunity................................................................................................14
4. NREN: Congress Envisions a National Research and Education Network but Gives Few Details................................................................................18
5. Privatization: Yes, But How?....................................................................20
6. An Alternative Vision: The National Public Network...............................22
7. Haphazard Commercialization: Two Rival Internets Emerge
• ANS................................................................................................24
• CIX.................................................................................................32
8. Conflict and Resolution: The Triumph of the CIX....................................34
9. Meanwhile: The NSF Makes Plans to Privatize the NSFNET Entirely. . ..40
10. The Fall of the CIX and the Rise of the Large Backbone Providers..... .. ..44
11. Evaluating the NSF’s Plan for Privatization: A Lost Opportunity............47
12. The Internet Boom.....................................................................................50
CONCLUSION..................................................................................................................52
GLOSSARY......................................................................................................................55
BIBLIOGRAPHY..............................................................................................................57
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my advisor at Wesleyan University, Professor Paul
Erickson, for helping me at every step of the way, and for always encouraging me to dig
deeper and deeper into this confusing and poorly documented period until the story
finally started to make sense.
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Introduction
“It's a ‘phase change’ – like moving from ice to water; ice is simple and water is simple, but in the middle of the change it's mush – part monopoly, part franchise, part open
competition. We want to manage that transition.”1
–Al Gore, on the privatization of the Internet, 12/21/93.
Although much has been written about the history of the Internet, most accounts
focus on two distinct historical epochs, both of which have their own clearly defined
narratives. During the 1970’s and the early 1980’s, the Internet was a grand research
experiment conducted by elite technologists at the Advanced Research Project Agency
(ARPA) under the aegis of the U.S. military, connecting just a few of the most
prestigious research facilities in the country. Then starting in the mid 1990’s, the Internet
became the great universal network phenomenon, emerging from hundreds and thousands
of poorly-dressed geniuses working out of their garages in Silicon Valley, and driven by
the insatiable desire of people all over the world to share information freely. Yet most
accounts only gloss over the period between these two stages, during which the National
Science Foundation (NSF) built its own network, the NSFNET, while a privately run
Internet emerged around it and eventually overtook it. As a result, this crucial phase of
the Internet’s development has never been properly integrated into the larger story of the
creation of the Internet.
This omission exists in part because during the intermediate stage the Internet was
transitioning between the two distinct stages; it was half research network, half
commercial network, and part government-run, part privately run, and thus was much
more resistant to easy classification. Corresponding to this conceptual confusion, the
1 Remarks by Vice President Al Gore at National Press Club, December 21, 1993.Available at http://www.ibiblio.org/nii/goremarks.html (accessed December 14, 2008).
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sources needed to make sense of the story are scattered and obscure. Dr. Doug Gale,
former network administrator at the NSF, calls this period the Internet’s “Dark Ages,”
since while the record of the early stage was preserved by ARPA’s extensive
documentation, and while the record of the later stage was preserved by extensive press
coverage of all the successful Internet companies, the NSFNET stage was “an
extraordinarily decentralized process” and “the record [only] exists in people’s basements
[and] closets.”2 Yet while it is true that the record exists in people’s basements and
closets, the record also exists in emails, online mailing lists, newspaper and journal
articles, contract solicitations, commissioned reports, legislation and congressional
hearings, almost all of which are accessible by anyone through the Internet itself.3 This is
not just a coincidence, or a testament to the breadth of content on the Internet; rather, the
Internet we know today literally developed around the computers that partook in the
events of this intermediate period. With enough persistence, it is possible to find these
computers and the documents they contain, and thus to uncover the history of this period,
which has been buried by layers and layers of additional content since the Internet’s
popularity exploded.
In addition to this period’s lack of a clear narrative and the obscurity of its
sources, scholars have neglected to write about this period in part because it was not
considered to be very important. During the 1990’s, the Internet’s dramatic rise in
popularity made it seem as if the Internet’s history was teleological, leading inexorably to
the naturally emergent—and flawless—universal network. But in reality, the privatization
was not the total success that everyone thought it was in the mid 1990’s. Once the frenzy
2 “Illuminating the net’s Dark Ages.”3 “Illuminating the net’s Dark Ages.”
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of Internet idealization began to wear off at the end of the decade, the persistent
dominance of a few large backbone providers and the increasing threat of malicious
hackers prompted a handful of legal scholars to consider the effect the NSF’s
privatization policies had had on the Internet’s infrastructure. In 2001, Jay P. Kesan and
Rajiv C. Shah co-published an article titled “Fool Us Once Shame On You—Fool Us
Twice Shame On Us” in the Washington University Law Quarterly, which concluded that
the NSF privatization was in fact deeply flawed, and that it was directly responsible for
many of the Internet’s lingering problems. While the article does provide an important
contribution to the scholarship of the late NSFNET period, by its nature as a legal essay,
it focuses predominantly on the shortcomings of a few specific NSF policies and their
ramifications, while overlooking the broader historical developments of the period. A
comprehensive history of this period still remains to be written.
To fill this gap in the Internet’s history, I will examine the development of the
Internet from 1986 to 1995, focusing on its transition from being a government-run
network restricted to researchers to being a privately run network open to anyone. The
NSF had to build the NSFNET itself in order to connect its researchers to national
supercomputer sites in 1986, since there was no market for high-bandwidth network
services at the time. But over the next seven years, spurred on in part by the demand
generated by the NSFNET, a market for commercial network services emerged that could
potentially provide the nation’s researchers with high-bandwidth Internet service without
the NSF’s continued management. And so people’s understanding of the Internet
underwent a paradigm shift—it went from being a high-tech communications system
built to order to just being a standardized commodity. Rather than continue to pay for its
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own backbone network, the NSF arranged for the research community to buy service
from competing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) instead, thus finalizing the Internet’s
new form as a purely private network.
Yet as Al Gore remarked, during the “phase change” between these two states, the
Internet was mush—the NSF’s unimaginative and non-transparent policies created
conflict, confusion and chaos, and led briefly to the development of two rival Internets:
the ANSNET, which was run in cooperation with the NSF, and the CIX, which was run
entirely by the private sector. The NSF had originally planned on simply giving the
ANSNET to the non-profit corporation ANS, but complaints and accusations from the
Internet community caused the NSF to stall its flawed plan for rapid privatization and to
reexamine its policies in light of public concerns. The discussion that followed broadened
the NSF’s narrow vision and gave voice to many interested parties, including researchers,
regional networks, commercial service providers, ideological organizations,
telecommunications companies and other governmental agencies. Most importantly,
however, it stalled the NSF’s privatization process for several years, during which time
the privately run Internet flourished on its own, and a handful of large backbone
providers came to dominate the market. The Internet was growing so quickly, in fact, that
the NSF was losing its ability to even influence it at all.
But the NSF had one last piece of leverage over the private Internet: the entire
research community was still accessing the Internet for free courtesy of the NSF, and the
private ISPs wanted the researchers to pay them for service instead. In the process of
privatizing this last remaining element of the government-sponsored network, the NSF
had one final opportunity to exert influence over the Internet’s infrastructure. But the
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NSF was rushed, overworked, and unqualified to manage such a large privatization
process, and as a result the NSF ultimately ignored many of the requests made of it and
implemented a flawed plan for privatization. In doing so, they wasted what may have
been the last opportunity that any agency or institution ever had to exert systematic
influence over the structure of the Internet. Although the shortcomings of the NSF’s plan
were subtle, they turned out to be more insidious and long lasting as well—most of the
problems that emerged from the rushed privatization still plague the Internet today. But
the dramatic rise in popularity of the Internet following the privatization and the
commercial success of many diverse ISPs provided such economies of scale that the new
Internet was able to please and impress most everybody within a short period of time.
Consequently, the underlying problems that developed as a result of the shortcomings of
the NSF’s plan went largely unnoticed and unquestioned until legal scholars began
examining them nearly a decade later.
Yet even despite the more recent recognition of this transition’s importance,
scholars have still avoided writing about this period in depth. It is not hard to see why. As
explored above, there is no clearly defined narrative and the necessary sources are
scattered and obscure. Furthermore, the story itself is often convoluted and bizarrely
complex, with most groups and agencies acting simultaneously with only limited
communication between them. Even the people involved did not always seem to
understand what was happening, whom they were dealing with, or what was expected of
them. Yet we must brave through this mess, for the Internet’s transition from a
government-run network restricted to researchers to a privately run network open to
anyone is surely one of the most crucial chapters in the history of the modern world.
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Background: The ARPANET Transitions to TCP/IP
The early stages of the Internet’s history are both relatively well known and
relatively straightforward. The Internet’s precursor, the ARPANET, was originally built
by ARPA’s elite technologists as a grand experiment in a “climate of pure research.”4
ARPA, which stands for the Advanced Research Projects Agency, was created in 1958 as
a response to the launching of the Sputnik satellite by the Soviet Union in order to foster
radical innovation for the U.S. military. With no pressure to meet any short-term
deadlines, ARPA was “the place for people with ideas too crazy, too far out and too risky
for most research organizations…[ARPA was] an organization willing to take a risk on
an idea long before it is proven.”5 Although networking technology became essential to
the U.S. military soon after, ARPANET was originally built as a bold venture before its
intended uses were entirely evident.
The ARPANET launched in 1969 employing the somewhat primitive Network
Control Protocol (NCP), and by 1970 it connected thirteen elite research sites all over the
country.6 During the 1970s, while the network was actively used by the military and elite
researchers alike, the military sought to develop internetworking technology that would
allow the effective interconnection of ARPANET with other types of networks that the
military employed, including radio, satellite, and local area networks.7 The result was the
TCP/IP Internet Protocol Suite, which allowed for the interconnection of disparate
4 Michael Hauben, “History of ARPANET.”5 DARPA Mission, at http://www.darpa.mil/mission.html 6 Moschovitis, 110 and “DARPA and the Internet Revolution.”7 Abbate, 122 & Moschovitis, 110.
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networks by making the host computers responsible for reliable communication and thus
reducing the role of the network itself to the bare minimum. These new protocols allowed
the military to combine its disparate networks into one unified network, which enabled
communication between command centers, labs, field operatives, and overseas facilities,
thus making each individual network significantly more useful.
To encourage the implementation of TCP/IP, ARPA made all of the research
related to the protocols public and open to everyone.8 This included specifications on
how to build TCP/IP software and how to install it on a host computer.9 ARPA also
established a $20 million fund to help computer manufacturers implement TCP/IP on
their products.10 By the end of the decade, many of the ARPANET sites had begun
transitioning from the NCP protocols to the TCP/IP protocols, but given the lack of
standardization among different computers and operating systems, it often took enormous
effort to do so. To speed up the process, Major Joseph Haughney announced in 1981 that
all ARPANET hosts would be required to adopt TCP/IP by January of 1983, or risk being
terminated from the network.11 Following this transition, the new TCP/IP based
ARPANET, as well as the other TCP/IP based networks that it was connected to, were
collectively referred to as the Internet, while the ARPANET was consider the Internet’s
“backbone”.12 A few months later, in the face of growing concerns that malicious users
might hack into the military’s computers through the Internet, the military split off its
networks from the Internet and formed the separate and more secure MILNET, leaving
8 Comer, 56.9 Ibid, 56.10 Abbate, 143.11 Ibid, 140.12 Moschovitis, 110.
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the Internet as an entirely civilian network.13 But it was still only accessible to researchers
at the few elite universities that had ARPA contracts.
CSNET: The NSF’s First Major Computer Network is Simple and Successful
In the late 1970’s, the few computer scientists that had ARPANET access reaped
significant advantages from their network service, including access to specialized
mainframe computers and the ability to easily collaborate with other (elite) computer
scientists.
14
Computer scientists without these resources were at a disadvantage, and
many began to organize in order to seek funding from the government to provide them
with network access. In 1979, a group headed by Lawrence Landweber, the chairman of
the University of Wisconsin’s computer science department, submitted a proposal to the
NSF for a new network (to be called CSNET) to connect computer science departments
all over the country. The network would have employed the X.25 protocol, rather than
the TCP/IP protocol that the ARPANET was transitioning to, and thus would be have
been separate from the existing network community. The proposal was rejected, but in
1981, with the help of Vinton Cerf from ARPA, the group submitted a second proposal
that was accepted for a network that would employ the TCP/IP protocols and that would
interconnect with the ARPANET.
The new plan benefited both existing ARPANET users and the new CSNET users
by allowing all computer scientists to communicate over the same network. Furthermore,
the new plan allowed a gradation of cost by allowing computer science departments to
13 Abbate, 143.14 Ibid, 183.
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no commercial market for networking services, and so no companies felt that the NSF
was unfairly competing with them for clients. Nor were there any companies interested in
accessing the CSNET, and thus there was no petition to allow commercial usage of the
network. And finally, besides ARPA, the rest of the federal government knew little about
the network and expressed no interest. Because so few parties were involved, and the
CSNET was able to please those that were at little cost, there was no need for the NSF to
open the network to commercialization.
NSFNET: The NSF Builds a General-Purpose Network for the Research
Community
As early as the late 1960’s, the NSF had been building regional computing centers
and subsidizing regional academic networks in order to provide computing resources to
as many researchers as possible. Although the NSF realized the value that computer
networks could provide research communities in terms of communication and
collaboration, the main focus of these early regional networks was to provide access to
expensive computer resources. This was the age of mainframe computers and centralized
processing, and it was often cost prohibitive for an individual lab to have its own
computer. The regional networks were able to provide access to the regional computing
centers for less than it would have cost to supply each lab with its own computer
powerful enough for its needs. But by the mid 1980’s the system of regional networks
was insufficient for the needs of the scientific community. Research everywhere was
becoming increasingly dependent on computation, and the NSF sought to dramatically
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expand its computer-networking program.
In 1984, the National Science Foundation built several new supercomputer
centers scattered throughout the United States. In order to make the supercomputers
widely available to the research and education community, the NSF built a national
network to link the supercomputers. The NSF planned for the network to be three-tired.
The top-tier would be the national backbone, which the NSF planned to build and operate
directly and which would be called the NSFNET. The backbone would connect to all of
the supercomputing sites, as well as to several nodes at which various regional networks
could connect. The middle-tier would be composed of the regional networks. The NSF
had already subsidized the creation of several regional networks in the preceding
decades, most of which were run by academic consortia, and the NSF planned to
subsidize the creation of many more all over the country that would be able to connect to
the NSFNET as well. The lowest-tier would be the individual campus networks, which
would connect in turn to the regional networks.
The NSFNET launched in 1986, but in a severely limited way. It only connected
six nodes and operated at the limited speed of 56 Kbps. Further, it employed a set of
protocols referred to as the “fuzzball” protocols, rather than TCP/IP, and as such could
not easily interconnect with the ARPANET, which, as explored above, had become
entirely TCP/IP as of 1983.18 Like the original regional networks, the primary focus of
the NSFNET was to pool computing resources by providing researchers all over the
country with access to the supercomputers. That is not to say that the NSF did not realize
18 Abbate, 193. MERIT’s Final Report suggests that the NSFNET could interconnect withthe ARPANET from the beginning, and so it is not entirely clear which protocols the firstgeneration NSFNET used or how effectively it was able to interconnect with theARPANET.
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the importance of communication and collaboration among researchers—especially after
the success of the CSNET, it was clear how invaluable a large network could be to a
research community. But at this point the NSF was primarily concerned with providing
access to computer resources, and the benefits of the network community came as a
bonus.
The NSF encouraged general access of the NSFNET, however, by not restricting
access to supercomputer researchers and instead allowing all academic users to access the
network. Most other government-run networks at the time were restricted to a specific set
of specialized users; the NSF was the first agency to encourage all researchers to join the
NSFNET regardless of discipline or needs.19 Although the NSFNET still employed
“fuzzball” protocols and was not yet part of the Internet, the decision to allow general
access was a significant step towards the realization of a single national network not
Balkanized by individual functions.
NSFNET usage grew faster than the NSF had imagined. After the launch of the
NSFNET in 1986, users from all over the country began sharing all sorts of information
with each other in a decentralized manner in addition to accessing the supercomputer
facilities. Researchers of all kinds took a liking to the network and enjoyed exploring it
and communicating with its members. By the middle of 1987, the increasing network
usage had exhausted the limits of the first generation NSFNET backbone, and the NSF
sought to significantly upgrade the network as quickly as possible.
The new network would connect to many more sites, operate at T1 (1.5 Mbps, up
from 56 Kbps), employ TCP/IP protocols, interconnect with ARPANET and take over
ARPANET’s role as the primary backbone of the Internet. Because of the scale and
19 National Science Foundation, “The Launch of the NSFNET.”
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expense of the project, the NSF sought a cooperative agreement with a third-party
organization that would construct and manage the backbone. On June 15 th, 1987, the
National Science Foundation issued a Project Solicitation for Management and
Operation of the NSFNET Backbone Network (NSF 87-37). The five-year cooperative
agreement was awarded to the Michigan Educational Research Information Triad
(MERIT), which offered the lowest bid by a significant margin. One of the reasons
MERIT was able to offer such a low bid was their proposed system of cost sharing. The
State of Michigan, MCI, and IBM were all going to provide resources to MERIT to
subsidize the project. IBM and MCI were both eager to contribute because they thought
that the project would give them a head start in what promised to be a growing field, as
well as provide opportunities for technology transfer .20
NREN: Congress Envisions a National Research and Education Network but Gives
Few Details
While the NSF developed its own national research network in the form of the
NSFNET, Congress began to see the importance and promise of a national computer
network, and requested that the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) write a
report that explored the Federal Government’s options for advancing the nation’s
computer networking. The Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering, and
20 MERIT, NSFNET Final Report, 8.
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Technology (FCCSET) completed the report in 1987, which called for a concerted effort
to create a national research network by the year 2000.21 The two main objectives
outlined in the report were to provide network service to all of the nation’s researchers,
and to stimulate R&D in networking technology to advance the nation’s industry
competitiveness.22
The buzzword in Congress had become the NREN (or the National Research and
Education Network), which was curiously distinct from the Internet. At this point in time,
the NSFNET, the ARPANET and the other TCP/IP based networks that connected to
them were considered the Internet, but the Internet did not yet have the connotation of the
universal network that it has today. Although the Internet Protocols were designed to
allow internetworking between different types of networks, it was still only a network of
networks rather than the network of networks, and the FCCSET report did not make it
clear that the Internet would eventually become the fruition of the NREN vision. Rather
the NREN referred to the envisioned high-speed backbone network itself, and although
the NREN was to connect with all other federal networks, it was not specifically
delineated that it would serve as the backbone for a universal network based on TCP/IP
protocols. And although the NSF was in the process of developing a network for the
nation’s researchers, the FCCSET only mentioned the NSF as one of five federal
agencies with computer networks, alongside the Department of Defense, NASA, Health
and Human Services, and the Department of Energy, and did not indicate that the NSF
would take a leadership role in the development of the NREN. The report instead
suggested that the five agencies listed above collaborate on the NREN project.
21 High Performance Computing and Networking for Science—Background Paper, 25.22 Ibid , 25.
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A follow-up report released in 1989 provided a more detailed plan for
implementing the NREN vision by dividing the project into three-stages: first, to upgrade
and interconnect the networks of the five groups into a jointly funded and managed T1
network; second, to integrate the national networks into a T3 backbone by 1993; and
third, to create a multi-Gbps NREN by the mid 1990’s.23 The 1989 report also declared
that the third and final stage would “include a specific, structured process resulting in
transition of the network from a government operation to a commercial service,” and
gave NSF the leadership role in managing the network upgrades and in eventually
transitioning the network to private management.
But although the FCCSET reports provided a solid overview of the goals for the
NREN, it did not address issues related to commercial access, competition with
commercial providers, or the management of the network. Furthermore, there were still
uncertainties in many elements of the project, such as the scope, pricing, management,
policies, and role of the private sector. Congress commissioned a report from the Office
of Technology Assessment (OTA) in 1989 to investigate and clarify many of the
unresolved issues concerning the NREN. The report explored—though offered few
solutions to—many of the tensions and ambiguities that surrounded the NREN vision, as
well as the issues that might arise as the research network interacted with the private
sector. However, it is not clear what agency if any was given the task of considering the
issues that the OTA report raised.
Privatization: Yes, But How?
23 Ibid , 32.
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The goal of eventually privatizing the Internet was part of a larger trend towards
increased private control of telecommunications networks. By the late 1980’s both
political parties were against excessive government intervention in the
telecommunications industry, and both encouraged deregulating the industry and
allowing several firms to openly compete for clients.24 This trend is itself an element of a
broader reluctance towards excessive government intervention in commercial markets—
and excessive government spending—that grew out of the small-government ethos of the
Reagan years. Privatization was considered a win-win situation; not only would it allow
more choices for network users and more opportunities for network providers, but it
would also cost less.
As computer networking gained popularity in the late 1980’s, it was clear that
nationwide networks would eventually become commercially feasible. Conflict would
then be inevitable between a government-run network and any number of competing
commercial networks. Therefore the general consensus in Washington was that the
government would get out of the way entirely once commercial network providers could
meet the needs of the nation’s researchers. But questions still remained: first, how to tell
when commercial networks become adequately robust, and second, how best to manage
the transition period when nationwide commercial networks exist, but while none are yet
capable of meeting researchers’ high-speed demands.
A third question remained as well: how exactly to privatize the NREN. Although
by 1989 Congress had made it clear that the network would eventually be privatized,
there had been no formal exploration of what the process would entail. The 1989
FCCSET report gave the NSF a leadership role in the development of the NREN and in
24 “The Privatization of the Internet’s Backbone Network,” 2.
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managing the privatization, but it gave no specifics. William Wulf of the NSF testified
before Congress in 1989 that since the FCCSET report was not clear about how to
privatize the network, the NSF would fund studies to explore its options.25 The NSF
began holding workshops, most notably two workshops at Harvard University in 1990
and 1991, in which many different interest groups discussed possible approaches to
privatizing the Internet. Although some considered the workshops to be unnecessarily
exclusive—the first one was invitation only and the second one cost between $750 and
$1500 to attend—many different views were represented, including those of researchers,
economists, policy experts, and telecommunications companies.
26
The NSF had
informally planned on simply giving control of the entire backbone network to MERIT
when the five-year cooperative agreement expired in 1992, but its uninspired plan faced
strong opposition from many interest groups, especially from the Federation of American
Research Networks (FARNet) and EDUCOM (a group representing University
computing interests), both of which insisted that regional networks be given a choice in
which backbone provider to buy service from.27 Following the workshops and other
discussions with interested parties, the NSF found a “broad consensus” that it should
transition the Internet to the hands of a few competing private companies.28
An Alternative Vision: The National Public Network
While engineers, bureaucrats and legislators in Washington D.C. made their plans
25 “Fool us Once,” 114.26 Ibid, 135.27 Cook, “Whom shall it serve?”28 Abbate, 197.
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for a research network, a group of libertarians on the other side of the country were
developing an alternative vision for a national network that would be designed first and
foremost for the public at large. The interest group representing this vision, the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, advocated the consideration of broader public values throughout the
privatization process, and suggested striving for a National Public Network (NPN)
instead of a National Research and Education Network (NREN).
John Perry Barlow, a former Grateful Dead lyricist and Wyoming cattle rancher,
began using computer networks in 1987 to connect with other members of the Grateful
Dead community. He met many fellow Dead Heads through an online bulletin board and
in turn developed a deep appreciation for the power of computer networks to provide
opportunities that transcended traditional limitations of geography. The poet inside him
began to see the virtual world of computer networks as a place in itself, and he coined the
name “electronic frontier” to describe this strange new world. He envisioned an exotic,
post-territorial order in which people lived together in peace and liberated themselves
from all rules and oppression.29
Yet despite Barlow’s ideals, the government did intrude on this space. In 1990 the
United States Secret Service tracked an illegally copied document through the Internet,
and ended up confiscating computers and documents from Steve Jackson Games, a small-
time publisher. The Service retained the items for a long time, forcing the publisher to
miss deadlines and lay off workers, and when it finally returned the computer all private
emails had been individually accessed and deleted.30 The publisher sought a civil liberties
group to help him file a lawsuit against the Secret Service, but no existing institution was
29 Goldsmith, 17.30 EFF, “A History of Protecting Freedom Where Law and Technology Collide.”
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interested in the case.
News of Steve Jackson Games’ run-in with the Secret Service convinced Barlow
that the “electronic frontier” needed to be defended from the oppressive intrusion of
territorial government. Barlow recruited fellow libertarians Mitch Kapor and John
Gilmore, and together founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in 1990 to
protect the virtual worlds of computer networks from governmental intrusion and
regulation. They gained publicity in the computer industry for representing the Steve
Jackson Games case, and attracted many wealthy donors, including both individuals
interested in libertarianism and big corporations like Microsoft that sought legal
insulation from government regulation.31
Throughout the next several years, the EFF provided the dominant voice for the
creation of an all-purpose network designed for universal accessibility. In 1991, Mitch
Kapor of the EFF posted a paper titled "The Privatized NREN" in which he advocated the
creation of a National Public Network (NPN), which would represent the convergence of
the NREN with the analog telephony public switched network. Kapor envisioned a
network run entirely by the private sector, in which all of the government’s desired users
would buy network service from commercial providers as though it were any other
commodity.32 Furthermore, he sought to establish a mandatory interconnection policy so
that all network service providers would have the right to freely interconnect with the
NPN.33 In essence, Kapor wanted the government to ensure that the network remained
open and free, with low barriers to entry so that diversity and public choice could
blossom. Kapor’s value-based vision contrasts strongly with the highly technical visions
31 Goldsmith, 19.32 Mitch Kapor, “The Privatized NREN.”33 Ibid.
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emanating from Washington. Although the name ‘National Public Network’ never caught
on, the basic idea of the Internet as a public service did, and it became an increasingly
influential idea as the decade progressed.
Haphazard Commercialization: Two Rival Internets Emerge
ANS
In July 1988, the new NSFNET T1 backbone became operational, connecting
thirteen regional networks, including more than 170 campus networks.
34
Demand for
NSFNET access continued to surge, and network traffic generally rose about 10% per
month. In June 1989, the NSF approved an increase in the authorization limit of what the
NSF could pay MERIT, from $14 million to $20 million, in order to enhance the network
and increase its overall capacity. But soon after the increase it became clear that even the
planned upgrade would not be sufficient to handle the increasing network traffic. While
the NSF sought more funding from Congress to upgrade the entire backbone network to
T3, it also became clear that the scope of the project would be too large and complex for
the NSF’s Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) staff of 14.35
The dramatic growth of the network along with limited funds and resources made
the NSF dependent on external assistance—in this case from IBM, MCI, and MERIT—to
continue to expand the network. While the NSF struggled to keep up with the network’s
growing needs, IBM began making its own plans to upgrade the network to T3. At this
point, IBM was the aging giant of the mainframe computer age and was beginning to lose
34 National Science Foundation, “The Launch of the NSFNET”35 Cook, “NSFNET ‘Privatization’ and the Public Interest”, Part I
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its relevance as the market shifted away from large mainframes and towards personal
computers, a sector in which IBM had had only limited success. Its supporting role in the
management of the NSFNET gave IBM a foot in the door in the growing networking
industry, and IBM sought to capitalize on its position by spearheading a bold expansion
of the network. The NSF’s inability to adequately support the expansion of the network
provided IBM with a unique opportunity to gain more experience with network
technology, more control over the blossoming network, and also to reinvigorate itself in
the process.36
IBM, MCI, and MERIT decided to spin off a corporation that would take over the
management of the NSFNET backbone, and that would try to find new ways to fund the
continued development of the network infrastructure. Their main plan was to attract
commercial users to the network, and to charge them higher fees in order to fund the
continued development of the network. They needed the NSF’s approval to do so,
however, because the NSFNET Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) prohibited commercial
users from accessing the NSFNET. In June 1990, Doug van Houwelling, Chairman of
MERIT, sent the NSF a letter declaring the groups’ plan. As Gordon Cook writes of the
letter, “The tone does not ask permission. Rather it states a fact and invites the
government to approve retroactively.”37 Stephen Wolff agreed on the NSF’s behalf that
MERIT could subcontract its responsibilities under the Cooperative Agreement, and
further stated that the new corporation “may solicit and attach to the NSFNET backbone
new users, including commercial users…with the understanding that 1) such users will
reimburse [the new corporation] for at least the full average cost of the connection, the
36 Ibid.37 Ibid.
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added traffic, and additional related support, and 2) the reimbursements will be used to
enhance the network infrastructure and services, in order that the level of service
provided by MERIT under its Cooperative Agreement with NSF not be diminished.” 38
Following the green light from the NSF, MERIT, IBM, and MCI formed a nonprofit
corporation called Advanced Network Services (ANS) and subcontracted the operation
and management of the NSFNET to it. In May of 1991, ANS spun off a for-profit
corporation called ANS CO+RE Systems, Inc. (CO+RE) to sell commercial Internet
service under the conditions laid out above.
Although the NSF approved these actions, it did so in haste without ever
consulting the White House, the OSTP, or the National Science Board.39 Yet while its
failure to consult other agencies about this drastic change of plan is curious, the NSF had
little choice but to agree to MERIT’s requests. The NSF had neither the funds, nor the
resources, nor the expertise to execute the T3 upgrade, and given the short time frame
before the current network would become inadequate, the NSF had very little bargaining
power over MERIT, IBM, and MCI. The NSF was therefore at the whim of those with
the resources to advance the development of the network backbone. But in the haste of
the agreement, the NSF failed to clearly spell out goals or benchmarks, or to consider the
many complications that might arise, and the agreement ultimately created significant
conflict throughout the network community.
The subcontracting of the management of the backbone to ANS was problematic
above all because the NSF and ANS had conflicting goals. The NSF valued computer
networking among other reasons as a way to provide American researchers with
38 Office of Inspector General, “Review of NSFNET”39 Cook, “NSFNET ‘Privatization’ and the Public Interest”, Part I
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resources for computation and collaboration. ANS, on the other hand, valued radical
technological development first and foremost, and was eager to raise money in order to
expand the network, even if that money came at the direct expense of the research
community. This reordering of priorities can be seen in ANS’ self-declared charter:
ANS was formed to participate in enhancing the competitiveness of the US inhigh performance computer networking by privatizing and expanding the currentnational backbone network serving the research and education community….With the formation of ANS, a transition will be required and mechanics must becreated to allow for the conversion from a research effort to a viable privatizedentity to carry out the mission.40
It is important to note that ANS was formed to accomplish those efforts by MERIT , not
by the NSF, and that the NSF’s main goal for the network upgrade at this point was still
primarily to serve the research and education community as increasing usage
overwhelmed the current infrastructure. But ANS had the boldness and the leverage to
strive for its vision with little NSF interference.
ANS CEO Al Weis exemplified ANS’s high-tech fervor. He had been in charge
of the supercomputing division at IBM, but had become convinced that computer
networking was displacing supercomputing as the technology of the age, and that
national high-speed networks would be essential for American competitiveness. Internet
analyst Gordon Cook described Weis as “one of those people who are infatuated with the
development of leading edge technology” and that since he thought gigabit networking
was the next big thing, “he was moving to where the new action would be.” Under
Weis’s leadership, ANS focused almost exclusively on planning radical upgrades and
raising the revenues to do it, while often ignoring the wants and needs of the existing
network community. 41
40 Cook, “NSFNET ‘Privatization’ and the Public Interest”, Part II41 Ibid.
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ANS planned to raise money through several channels, but with the exception of
one that was unsuccessful, all of them came at the expense of the mid-level networks and
thus at the expense of the research community at large. ANS’s strategy was threefold.
First, it planned to connect new commercial users directly to its network. In theory this
would have helped subsidize the research community, but ANS had very little success in
attracting commercial customers. At this point, ANS was running two networks over the
same wires: the NSFNET, a free service for all of the research users that had no
performance or service requirements and which prohibited commercial access, and the
ANSNET, a private network that allowed commercial access but required paying fees to
ANS. As part of the agreement with the NSF explored above, ANS would have to invest
all of the profits gained from providing commercial network service to the ANSNET into
developing and expanding the network infrastructure. ANS hoped that a huge influx of
corporate clients would raise enough money to support the expansion of the network and
thus subsidize the research community. But as we will see, ANS was unsuccessful in
attracting corporate users and most of the costs of the enhanced network fell either
directly or indirectly on the research users themselves.
Second, ANS planned to charge mid-level networks for the backbone services that
they had previously gotten for free. ANS had a few ways to motivate regional research
networks to switch from the free NSFNET to the costly ANSNET: by selling them better
service, offering better customer support, and by only allowing ANSNET users to send
commercial information over the backbone. Many regional networks sold intra-network
service to commercial users in order to raise revenues and help subsidize the research
users. The commercial users were forbidden from accessing the other regional networks
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through the NSFNET, however, because of the AUP. They would only be able send data
over the backbone if the regional network they were attached to subscribed to the
ANSNET and compensated ANS accordingly. But if a network did connect to the
ANSNET it would have to pass the extra costs onto its users, which were mainly
researchers whose usages were already subsidized by the NSF, and commercial users for
whom it might turn out to be cheaper to connect to the ANSNET directly.
Third, ANS planned to convince users who were then connected to mid-level
networks to instead connect directly to the ANSNET. This would also hurt the
researchers, however, because the commercial users were an important source of revenue
for the regional networks and were partly subsidizing the research community network
usage as it was.
Thus the subcontracting of the backbone management to ANS could only have
advanced the NSF’s goals if ANS had been able to attract enough new, paying
commercial customers to subsidize the research users through economies of scale. But in
1990 when the NSF agreed to MERIT’s plans, it had not investigated whether or not such
customers existed. It is not even clear that the NSF believed that such potential customers
existed; rather, it seems that the situation was simply not fully considered. Given the lack
of new commercial customers, ANS was really offering the NSF what Gordon Cook
called a “zero sum solution,” in which the NSF would continue to pay for network
services for the research community but would lose control over the network itself.
Still, ANS might have been successful in both advancing the network and serving
the research community if only it had been able to attract a substantial number of new
commercial users. It is not clear exactly why it had so little success in doing so. But an
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incidentally, it never alerted Dialog to the fact that it would only be able to access and be
accessed by a small fraction of the Internet. Dialog had published in its customer
newsletter that its site could be accessed at “dialog.com” and only found out that it did
not have full service once their would-be customers reported to them that they could not
access the site.46 Dialog then insisted that ANS switch its status from commercial to
research, and in exchange it would agree to—or pretend to—follow the restrictions laid in
the NSFNET AUP. To complicate this further, although mid-level networks were given
the offer to sign the Connectivity Agreement at no charge, and without a binding
obligation to sign a Gateway Agreement as well, many of them may not have realized
that this was possible and may have resisted signing the first agreement for fear that it
would be accompanied by financial obligation. As was, it would have been relatively
painless for each mid-level to sign the Connectivity Agreement, but all communication
with ANS was so convoluted, and the distrust of ANS so pervasive, that this outcome
never materialized and ANS’s commercial Internet never fully developed to ANS’s
expectations.
CIX
Meanwhile, while ANS was alienating the mid-level networks with its opaque
management and complicated pricing schemes, a truly commercial and non-governmental
Internet emerged to rival the ANS-run network. Although ANS had only limited success
attracting commercial users, a competitive market for nationwide computer networking
services was beginning to emerge alongside the ANSNET. In most cases these competing
networks bought out the infrastructure of regional networks and then sold them Internet
46 Ibid.
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service, while also selling intra-network, value-add service to commercial customers.
PSINet provides a model for how many of the commercial network service
providers came about. William L. Schrader, who had created the regional network
NYSERNet in 1986, saw the potential for a market for network services and tried to find
a way to profit from it. But since NYSERNet owned the network infrastructure, and the
NSF subsidized NYSERNet, he could not sell commercial service through NYSERNet
directly.47 In 1989, Schrader founded a for-profit company called Performance Systems
International (PSINet), which bought NYSERNet’s network infrastructure and began
selling network service to both NYSERNet and other commercial customers. PSINet was
a commercial success and several other networks performed similar maneuvers and
began selling commercial services as well.
Commercial users of different service providers had no way to interconnect,
however, since the respective commercial networks were only connected through the
NSFNET, which the commercial users were forbidden from accessing. The NSFNET’s
Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) stated that the NSFNET backbone must be used for the
advancement of research and education, and (with the exception of ANSNET users as
explained above) only traffic related to research and education could be sent through the
NSFNET backbone.48 Commercial traffic related to research and education fell into a
gray area, however, and it was not always clear what was and was not allowed. Gordon
Cook provides two examples of convoluted cases:
For example, the manufacturer of a new workstation may send a new productannouncement to a mailing list discussing engineering advancements inworkstations (informing) but not to individuals (selling). To cite another example,the publisher of a major legal database, makes its wares available via the network
47 Abbate, 19848 Abbate, 198
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free of charge to law students while law firms may not use the network to retrievematerial even for a fee.49
The NSF had no way to tell if a given packet that traversed the backbone was commercial
or non-commercial in nature, though, and the AUP was mainly kept in tact by an honor
system. Still, commercial users were reluctant to violate the rule, and may have risked
getting into trouble depending on what traffic they sent and to whom. So commercial
users of different commercial network service providers were effectively stranded on
different islands of the Internet and were unable to freely exchange traffic.
Several commercial network service providers sought to create an AUP-free
interconnection in order to overcome this limitation. In July of 1991, three of the new
network service providers, PSINet, CERFNet, and Alternet, came together to establish a
nonprofit organization called the Commercial Internet Exchance (CIX).50 The CIX
established a gateway at which all member networks were able to interconnect. Although
membership fees supported the physical infrastructure, the networks agreed to accept all
traffic from the competing networks free of charge. For a start-up fee of $5,000, an
annual fee of $10,000, and the price of running wires to the CIX router in Santa Clara,
CA, a network could provide its users with unlimited access to all other CIX users, and
likewise open up all of its users to receive traffic from all other CIX users. Partly because
of how easy the CIX made it for networks to interconnect, and partly because of the
value-add services offered by its member networks, the CIX quickly gained popularity
and success. Many more networks joined in the following year and there were twelve
members by the summer of 1993.51
49 Cook, Whom Shall it Serve?50 Abbate, 19851 Strangelove, “Commercial Opportunities in the Networking Age.”
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Conflict and Resolution: The Triumph of the CIX
"I think [ANS is] a woefully mismanaged company which doesn't know what it wants to be when it grows up. They had all the opportunities to walk away with the Internet accessmarket and they blew them to companies such as PSI or Alternet, which didn't have 10%of their capitalization."52
-A senior network official at ANS, reflecting on ANS’ surprising loss tothe underdog CIX.
By the end of 1991, ANS and the CIX member-networks were selling competing
versions of AUP-free access to different parts of the Internet. ANS could provide
commercial users access to all of the regional networks that had signed Connectivity
Agreements, often for large and hard to calculate fees, while members of the CIX could
provide commercial users with access to all of the CIX member networks, but not to
regional networks that were not CIX members. The division of the Internet into these two
rival camps was complicated by the unique position awarded to ANS by its arrangement
with the NSF.
Although ANS was unable to convince all of the regional networks to sign
Connectivity Agreements, and so never fully capitalized on its unique position, the CIX
insisted that the NSF was giving ANS an unfair advantage over the CIX. First, ANS
received $10 million a year from the NSF to subsidize the development of the network,
while the CIX received no such federal subsidies. In a market that offered such
economies of scale, a subsidy gave ANS a distinct pricing advantage, in that ANS could
still profit while charging its users less than the CIX member networks could. Second, by
52 Cook Report on Internet, “Hybrid Networks in the Context of NII Design”
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virtue of running the NSFNET, ANS already possessed a nationwide backbone network
that connected to all of the regional mid-level networks. Furthermore, by virtue of its
agreement with the NSF, it had the sole right to sell access to that backbone network to
commercial users. In contrast, the CIX could not sell commercial access to the backbone
and thus its commercial customers could not reach the large majority of regional
networks that were not CIX members.
The CIX member networks’ continued criticism led to a congressional hearing on
March 12th, 1992 regarding the management of the NSFNET. There were seven witnesses
at the hearing, including Mitchell Kapor, Chairman of the CIX (and of the EFF), and
William L. Schrader, President and CEO of PSINet, as well as representatives from
MERIT, the NSF, and the academic network associations Educom and FARNet. Many
criticisms were leveled at the NSF management, especially at the secretive and poorly
documented dealings between the NSF and ANS concerning commercialization, which
many claimed had resulted in a de facto monopoly and the impairment of the commercial
networking industry. Mitch Kapor insisted that the commercial market could already
provide sufficient networking capability to the research community, and that the current
agreement with ANS was retarding the natural development of the commercial network
services market. He suggested that the NSF shift its subsidies from the network providers
(in this case ANS) to the intended users and let all service providers compete equally for
clients.53 He also suggested that the AUP be broadened to allow commercial access to all
federally supported and subsidized regional networks as another way of leveling the
playing field.54 William Schrader of PSINet was less polite and criticized the NSF for
53 Management of the NSFNET, Mitch Kapor official statement, page 13.54 Management of the NSFNET, 110.
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giving ANS a “monopoly position” akin to “giving a federal park to K-mart.”55
Although Congressman Boucher, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Science, was
initially skeptical that the subsidization of ANS along with the AUP gave ANS an unfair
advantage, he became convinced over the course of the hearing and took it upon himself
to right the NSF’s inadvertent wrong. He proceeded to commission a report from the
Office of Inspector General to review the NSF’s dealings with ANS, and also passed
legislation expanding the NSFNET AUP to allow some commercial access. The actual
language of the new AUP was still problematic, however, and it was not entirely clear
when or whether commercial traffic not directly related to research was permissible on
the backbone. The amended AUP stated that the NSF’s networks “may be used
substantially for purposes in addition to research and education in the sciences and
engineering, if the additional uses will tend to increase the overall capabilities of the
networks to support such research and education activities.”56 Since many thought that
nearly all usage increased the value of the networks for researchers given the natural
economies of scale of computer networking, there was no consensus on whether or not
this amounted to a de facto removal of the AUP.57
In June of 1992, following the hearing but before the AUP was amended, ANS
agreed to provisionally interconnect with the CIX for a one-year trial period. It had
resisted until then because it thought that the CIX pricing scheme of unlimited traffic
exchange would not adequately compensate ANS for the extra traffic it would carry, and
also that interconnecting would threaten ANS’ leverage over aspiring commercial
55 "The privatization of the Internet's backbone network," 4.56 Office of Inspector General, 37-38.57 Perlman says that the AUP still impeded commercial traffic, while Kahin says thatBoucher’s amendment allowed unrestricted usage.
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customers. But ANS still believed that some sort of settlement process would eventually
be agreed upon that would compensate ANS for the commercial traffic it carried, and
planned to spend the trial year negotiating for a fairer long-term arrangement.
Although it is not entirely clear why ANS agreed to this temporary
interconnection, ANS’ compromise is indicative of the changing power relations between
ANS and the CIX. While ANS’ unresponsive management and complicated pricing
schemes had been turning off potential customers, the openness and simplicity of the CIX
had attracted many new users. The NSFNET backbone was losing its status as the “the
core” of the Internet, and it became more essential—at least for commercial users—to
have access to the CIX.58 Thus it is likely that ANS needed to offer its member networks
access to the CIX in order to stay competitive.
But while many network users thought that this interconnection would open the
network to all traffic in all directions, the result was not that simple.59 Although ANS
interconnected with the CIX, it did not become a member of the CIX, and therefore ANS’
commercial customers were not allowed to pass data through the CIX router. ANS only
agreed to transmit the data to the router, and had no control over what traffic was allowed
through it. A network that was connected to ANS would also have to be a member of the
CIX in order to pass data through the CIX router. Although this was not enforced
immediately following the interconnection, by September 1993 many people told the CIX
that they would not pay member dues as long as ANS users were getting similar access
for free through this loophole.60 In October 1992 the CIX installed a gateway router
58 Cook Report on Internet, “Advanced Network and Services (ANS) Joins CommercialInternet Exchange,” 12.59 Cook, “NSFNET ‘Privatization’ and the Public Interest,” Part 3.60 Cook Report on Internet, “Advanced Network and Services (ANS) Joins CommercialInternet Exchange,” 9.
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between the CIX router and the ANS attachment to the CIX in order to block ANS users
that were not paying members.61 According to ANS, this was discovered by other CIX
members as well as by ANS only after the filter was installed.62 A representative of
PSINet, one of the CIX member networks, responded that ANS was distorting the facts
and that most CIX members were well aware of the filtering and were uniformly in favor
of it.63 Although it is not always possible to know exactly who knew what when, it is well
established that there were many users who suddenly lost access to familiar sites without
understanding why.64
Although the provisional interconnection had left ANS and the CIX at a virtual
stalemate, the installation of the filter gave the CIX a decisive advantage over ANS.
Although members of the CIX that were not also connected to the ANS backbone lost
some of their connectivity as well, commercial users on the networks connected to ANS
that were not also CIX members were hurt by the filter the most. Three weeks later, on
November 19, 1993, presumably to appease its commercial customers who had lost CIX
access, ANS announced that it was joining the CIX under the same terms given to all of
the member networks.65 At this point, given ANS’s infrastructure pool commercial
surcharge, it was almost always cheaper for a regional network to pay for a direct
connection to the CIX router than to pay ANS to transmit its commercial data to the CIX
router.66 It now made sense for all regional networks to join the CIX rather than pay ANS
61 Email from Martin L. Schoffstall of PSINet to Ittai Hershman of ANS, available athttp://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/199311/msg00090.html(accessed December 16th, 2008).62 Ibid.63 Ibid.64 Cook Report on Internet, “Advanced Network and Services (ANS) Joins CommercialInternet Exchange,” 9.65 Ibid.66 Ibid, 11.
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the infrastructure pool commercial surcharge. And so ANS lost its ability to charge extra
for commercial traffic, and the complicated ANS pricing schemes disappeared, as did the
relevance of the AUP. The unlimited, un-metered, unrestricted traffic exchange that we
have now become familiar with had won. But although the CIX had become the core of
the Internet for commercial users, researchers still predominantly used the NSFNET,
which they had free access to courtesy of the NSF.
Meanwhile: The NSF Makes Plans to Privatize the NSFNET Entirely
The National Science Foundation was not heavily involved in the dispute between
ANS and the CIX. ANS had effectively taken over management of the backbone from the
NSF and pushed its own vision while the NSF sat on the sidelines for the whole ordeal.
The NSF was simply too busy to actively oversee ANS. As Milo Medin, Deputy Project
Manager of the NASA Science Internet Office, wrote, “The Foundation’s track record in
terms of technical management of the existing awardee is less than stellar. This is not
because the Foundation’s personnel are incompetent or unwilling to perform supervision;
it is because the existing staff is hopelessly overburdened with other work, and simply
does not have the time or resources to perform adequate supervision.”67 Instead of
supervising ANS, the NSF made long term plans to extricate itself from the Internet
backbone market entirely, in the hope that doing so would make the controversy moot
once and for all. But as we will see, the permanently overworked NSF ignored most of
the concerns that people raised about its plan, and proceeded to implement it in a flawed
and shortsighted manner,
67 “Fool us Once,” 127.
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Back in 1991, after the NSF’s original plan to give ANS full responsibility for the
backbone met such great opposition, the NSF began to consider less controversial ways
to privative the backbone. Having decided that it should transition the Internet to the
hands of a few competing private companies (as explored above in ‘Privatization: Yes,
But How?’), the NSF began formalizing its plan, which it referred to as the “Project
Development Plan.” In June of 1992, right as ANS was provisionally connecting to the
CIX, the NSF released a draft solicitation concept for public comment, which effectively
proposed a new design for the future of the Internet. The proposed plan included two
separate solicitations: the first for a Network Access Point (NAP) manager and Routing
Authority (RA), and the second for the construction and management of a new, very
high-speed backbone (vBNS). Each NAP would be an Internet exchange (like the CIX)
at which any appropriate network could interconnect, and the vBNS would connect to all
of the NAPs. Under the proposal, each NAP would be an “AUP-free” zone, while the
vBNS would ban commercial traffic entirely.
The basic idea behind the plan was that the private sector would entirely take over
the provision of low and medium bandwidth Internet service, while the NSF would
concentrate on developing the next level of high bandwidth services for computation-
intensive research (by building the vBNS). The NAPs would then allow the regional
networks, the commercial networks, the government networks and the vBNS to all
interconnect. To avoid repeating the ANS controversy, the winner of the vBNS contract
would be prohibited from selling commercial access to the vBNS; since the NAPs would
allow all networks to interconnect, the vBNS would only be a redundant connection and
could thus be used purely for research without facing any pressure to allow commercial
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users.
In response to the plan, the NSF received more than 240 pages of comments from
researchers, network service providers, government agencies and advocacy groups, most
of which was highly critical. There were two main areas of concern: the effectiveness of
the NAPs and the lack of consideration given to the broader significance of the project.
Regarding the NAPs, many engineers thought that the NAPs would not be able to
adequately handle increased future traffic.68 Milo Medin of NASA insisted that the NSF
institute more forceful requirements for continued performance, and recommended that
the solicitation “be rewritten to explicitly deal with the critical operational issues and
performance requirements associated with management of the NAPs and route servers. It
would be sheer negligence to not call out this critical issue in the specification.” 69
Some existing network service providers, on the other hand, felt that the
commercial Internet was already capable of serving both the research and business
communities adequately, and that the NSF’s proposal would only get in the way. There
already existed network access points at which many networks interconnected, such as
the CIX and MAE east, which had arisen naturally in the free market. The NSPs thought
that the official NAPs would end up costing more and being less efficient. As Rick
Adams of UUNet wrote, “I see no reason for MAE east participants to ‘transition’ to an
NSF funded NAP in DC. The only difference is that the NSF funded NAPs cost more
money to participants. Gee thanks Steve… Great idea to PAY someone to deliver a
service more expensive than already provided commercially.”70 Rick went on to insist
68 Ibid, 138.69 Ibid, 138.70 Rick Adams on the com-priv mailing list, available at http://www.interesting- people.org/archives/interesting-people/199403/msg00015.html (accessed November 24,2008). This email is from 1994 and was therefore not in direct response to the draft
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that the free market would naturally provide an effective collection of interconnection
points that would serve the network’s needs: “If NSF would get the hell out of the way
and stop confusing things with bad ideas like NAPs, you would see a nice stable set of
interconnection points materialize WITHOUT government money or meddling.”71
Regarding the bigger picture, many people felt that the NSF was focusing too
extensively on creating a technical design for a network that would serve the research and
business communities in the short run, while neglecting to ensure that the network would
serve the public in the long run. Since its founding in 1990, the Electronic Frontier
Foundation had become very active in the Internet community and had advocated for its
vision of a National Public Network at many policy meetings and industry workshops.
Although the EFF was not alone in wanting an all-purpose network, the foundation was
instrumental in bringing the broader significance of the network to the awareness of the
parties involved in the privatization process. In response to the draft solicitation, it
commented that “despite the NSF’s stated intentions, the NSFNET has set de facto
national public policy for an important part of the U.S. communications infrastructure
and will likely continue to do so.”72 As explored above (see “An Alternative Vision: The
National Public Network”), the EFF insisted that the NSF take steps to ensure that all
network service providers be granted a level playing field. Kapor suggested that the NSF
either give the FCC regulatory power of the network, or that it use its temporary leverage
to press the backbone providers to sign binding agreements to interconnect. 73 Given the
lack of consideration given to this issue, the EFF commented: “Critical governance issues
solicitation. However, there were similar—though less colorful—comments at the time.“Steve” refers to Steve Wolff of the NSF.71 Ibid.72 “Fool us Once,” 13873 Kapor, “The Privatized NREN.”
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seem as yet unspecified, including interconnection policies that would ensure a level
playing field for all network service providers. In the absence of such policy, it remains
unclear how the NSF will proceed to ensure an equitable and fair environment for all
service providers and users.”74
Although the NSF made a few changes from the draft solicitation, it did not
address the main issues discussed above. The NSF released the revised solicitation on
May 6, 1993, a few months before ANS joined the CIX, and announced the contract
awards in 1994. By the time the NSFNET was decommissioned in April 1995, the
Internet landscape had already changed dramatically: the CIX had risen (as explored
above) and fallen (as explored below), and a few large ISPs had come to dominate the
backbone industry. As we will see, the NSF’s plan ended up helping those large ISPs
further consolidate their power.
The Fall of the CIX and the Rise of the Large Backbone Providers
Although the CIX may have earned its place in history as “the heroic institution”
that enabled small ISPs to band together to defeat the leviathan ANS, it fell apart soon
afterwards as the rapidly expanding ISPs outgrew their use for it.75 After instituting the
routing filters on ANS users in late 1993, CIX membership jumped from 20 ISPs to 70
ISPs in only ten months.76 Yet there were still users that had CIX access who were not
technically supposed to. When a small network joined CIX member networks, it was
74 “Fool us Once,” 13975 “What is the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX)?” available athttp://cgi.amazing.com/internet/faq-8.0.html (accessed December, 16, 2008).76 Srinagesh, 143.
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pay the same member fees that larger networks paid. The only networks that still believed
in the CIX’s basic principles were the medium sized ones, and they were losing influence
quickly in the evolving marketplace.
Although in theory it may have been possible for the CIX to adapt to the changing
market circumstances and institute a tiered membership system, it was never able to do
so. This was in part because some of the older members of the CIX were, for whatever
reason, ideologically committed to the idea of equality among networks, and were
reluctant to accept the growing dominance of a few larger providers. As Cook explains,
The attitude of the two key board members who had been locked in the earlier struggle essentially stayed focused in a siege mentality that saw their views of theInternet as the only correct ones and showed no interest in consensus building.The Board was as a result seldom united, and, driven by…arrogance of almostreligious intensity…was unable to focus on the long term picture of thedevelopment of the industry, and unable to communicate satisfactorily with itsmembers.79
As a result, the CIX model of multilateral peering agreements, in which all networks
shared all data without settlements, gave way to bilateral peering agreements that allowed
for customizable arrangements depending on the relative sizes of the ISPs involved. New
Internet Exchanges also emerged that allowed more flexible peering arrangements among
networks, such as the rapidly expanding MAE-East in New York and the NSF-sponsored
NAPs, while the large backbone providers generally opted to set up private, bilateral
peering arrangements with other backbone providers of comparable size.
And so, in a manner eerily similar to the fall of ANS, the CIX lost its competitive
advantage to the large backbone providers. Although the CIX router had been the core of
the commercial Internet for almost a year, by the end of 1994 the handful of large
backbone providers who freely peered with each other became the new center of the
79 Cook Report, “CIX's Recent Troubles Documented By Former Executive Director.”
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commercial Internet. Once the NSFNET was deactivated in April 1995, and researchers
began buying Internet service just like everybody else, the large backbone providers
became the center of the entire, reunified Internet. They remain so to this day. And so,
after four years of chaos and confusion, the Internet completed its phase change and
finally reached a new stasis.
Evaluating the NSF’s Plan for Privatization: A Lost Opportunity
Presumably the NSF believed that the NAPs would provide an adequate structure
for universal interconnection. But without adequate performance requirements at the
NAPs, they became congested as predicted. As a result, Network Service Providers
(NSPs) that only offered Internet service that traversed a NAP were at a competitive
disadvantage relative to the larger backbone providers who could offer much more
efficient service. Since there was no mandatory interconnection policy, the large
backbone providers only agreed to peer with other backbone providers of comparable
size, and were able to charge high fees to small NSPs that wanted to connect with them.
The situation was worsened by the fact that in most cases the large backbone providers
controlled the NAPs as well, and were free to set NAP pricing structure and performance
levels to further slant the playing field in their favor.80 As a result, in 2001 only five
companies controlled 80% of the Internet’s backbone—MCI WorldCom, Genuity,
AT&T, Sprint, and Cable & Wireless—and the thousands of other ISPs depended on
buying service from these companies.81 Without a mandatory interconnection policy,
80 For more analysis on how the NAPs were used anti-competitively, see “Fool Us Once” pages 144-151.81 “Fool us Once,” 144.
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smaller companies were at the whims of the larger backbone providers, and were forced
to accept whatever fees were asked of them or else risk losing Internet connection all
together.
The NSF’s plan also failed to address many more general societal concerns that
are still relevant today, such as security.82 According to the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, “nearly every day our nation is discovering new threats and attacks
against our country’s networks.”83 Foreign opponents have “been able to penetrate poorly
protected U.S. computer networks” and have gained access to “military technology,
intellectual property of leading companies, and government data.”
84
The weaknesses in
cyber security stem from the Internet Protocols themselves, and although more secure
protocols have been developed, the commercial backbone providers have not had any
incentive to adopt them. The NSF had acknowledged the importance of network security
in 1991 when Charles Brownstein, assistant director of the NSF’s Computer and
Information Science and Engineering Directorate, stated that security “is a big concern
and growing bigger every day.” The NSF could have done a number of things to address
the problem, such as redesigning the Internet’s security mechanisms just as the military
had done with its network in 1983 (see: ‘Background: ARPANET and the Transition to
TCP/IP’ above).85 Instead, the NSF ignored the issue entirely.
As Shah and Kesan write, “The significant point is that government could have
done something, not necessarily that the government should have. However, there was
little public debate concerning what the government could have done. The lack of
82 Ibid, 159-16283 CSIS, “Securing Cyberspace,” Preface.84 Ibid, 11.85 “Fool us Once”, 161
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there was a high barrier to entry in the backbone market, there was a low barrier to entry
in the provision of dial-up access.89 Although it is not clear if the NSF was aware of this
at the time, the FCC ruled in 1983 that Enhanced Service Providers (ESPs), in this case
dial-up NSPs, did not need to pay access charges to local phone companies.90 As a result,
NSPs were able to provide unlimited, un-metered dial-up Internet access to its customers
as long as it was located within the range of a local telephone call. A small NSP in a rural
area only needed a few hundred customers to be able to support its facilities as well as
subscribe to a high-speed backbone provider.91 The entrepreneurial opportunities offered
by the local dial-up service market helped facilitate the rapid, inexpensive, and
geographically pervasive growth of the Internet. The concentration of power in the
backbone industry was not enough to offset this growing market.
But of course the real success of the Internet was fueled by its remarkable
popularity—a popularity that was hard to foresee at the beginning of the 1990’s. During
the NSFNET years, the Internet was hard to use. As author Ed Krol wrote, "What we had
was a library where all the books were dumped on the floor and there was no card
catalogue."92 Personal computers were still expensive, relatively rare, and employed
bland and un-stimulating text-based interfaces. On top of that, the Internet itself was
disorganized, with no good way to find anything on it, and it employed only a few
elementary protocols such as email and file-transfer. But the early 1990’s saw a dramatic
rise in popular computing which began to make the Internet more relevant. The
exponentially increasing price performance of computer chips led to more affordable PCs
89 Greenstein, 160.90 Oxman, “The FCC and the Unregulation of the Internet,” 16.91 Greenstein, 160-161.92 “Books on the Floor,” available at http://info.org.il/english/books_on_the_floor.html (accessed December 16th, 2008).
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that were capable of colorful graphics and more interactive operating systems. Bulletin
Board Systems (BBSs) such as America Online (AOL), CompuServe and Prodigy
became popular, and gave many consumers their first experiences of using computer
networks. Yet while the BBSs approximated the theoretical appeal of the Internet, their
popularity was based largely on proprietary content. The Internet itself still offered very
little to the average user.
But during the two years between the NSF’s solicitation in 1993 and the final
decommissioning of the NSFNET in 1995, two developments helped turn the Internet
into the popular and useful medium that it is today: the graphical web browser and the
search engine. Although Tim Berners-Lee had invented the World Wide Web (WWW)
protocols in 1990, they were not of much use to the general public until the release of the
sophisticated graphical web browser Netscape Navigator in 1994. Yet even with the
WWW, it was still hard for a curious web-crawler to find anything on the Internet. But
the creation of the Yahoo search engine in 1994 provided a systematic way for users to
find content on the web. Suddenly the web exploded and brought the Internet with it. The
BBSs all connected to the Internet and were gradually reduced from being unique content
providers to just being value-add Internet Service Providers. This shift from proprietary
content providers to the Internet frontier was ultimately a reflection of one basic fact:
people felt empowered by the Internet and they liked it. As Christopher Anderson wrote
in 1995:
That is why the Internet has exploded past commercial on-line services such asCompuServe and America Online (although they, too, are [growing] quickly, in part because they offer Internet access). Many of its users are not just informationconsumers, they are producers as well. For them, the Internet serves as personal printing press, radio station…in one. No commercial service can ever hope torival the quantity and quality of the output of 20m people. True, much of what
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they produce is rubbish; but much is astoundingly creative, sometimes evenuseful.93
Although the NSF ignored most of the EFF’s suggestions during the privatization
process, the Internet still developed into something approximating the EFF’s original
vision of a new world that empowered individuals.
Conclusion
And so the triumph of the commercial Internet, the privatization of the NSFNET,
and the new unified network’s unprecedented popularity all represented a new paradigm
for the Internet. The Internet had completed its long, complex phase change from its
original state as a government-run network restricted to researchers to its new state as a
privately run network open to anyone. Now once again everybody agreed on what the
Internet was and what it meant. Press coverage of the Internet’s successes snowballed,
with stories of mythic programmers, entrepreneurs, and innovators, as well as with all
sorts of tributes to the Internet’s revolutionary impact on all areas of life. The Internet
was seen as the great universal phenomenon that nobody saw coming and that nobody
could control. Excited scholars began studying the Internet’s early history to learn where
this miraculous network came from, and most focused on the ARPANET and the
development of the TCP/IP Internet Protocol Suite as the mythic origins of the new
phenomenon. The underlying assumption seems to have been that the modern Internet
emerged naturally from the technology itself, and that it was only a matter time between
the creation of the Internet Protocols and the development of a universal network based
93 “Accidental Superhighway,” 3.
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on un-metered, unrestricted traffic exchange.
This view that the Internet’s history was somehow teleological explains the two
distinct historical epochs in Internet historiography: first the Internet was created, and
second, the Internet eventually reached its destiny. The transition period—or the phase-
change—was thus only seen as noise; the complex politics and dynamics of the period
were considered to be entirely subservient to the larger, inevitable trend towards the
Internet’s ultimate fruition. For several years following the privatization, the Internet was
simply too novel and exciting for scholars to find it worth considering more nuanced
questions about the Internet’s past; the Internet was so universally useful and appealing
that it seemed obvious that the Internet should develop into what it did.
But at the turn of the century, the frenzy of Internet idealization finally began to
wear off. The advantage that small ISPs had received from telephony interconnection
laws vanished as dial-up service became obsolete; high-profile Internet security threats
became commonplace, and perhaps most importantly, the dot-com bubble burst and the
NASDAQ crashed. Suddenly the Internet stopped seeming so perfect. Only then did
scholars like Kesan and Shah begin to examine the Internet’s lingering problems more
closely, and to consider why only five backbone providers controlled 80% of the Internet,
and why the Internet’s infrastructure was fundamentally insecure. Both problems could
be traced back to the events of this period, to the rise and fall of the CIX and to the NSF’s
shortsighted plan for privatization, and both would be much more difficult to solve after
the fact.
It is hard to change the Internet now, or even to influence it—in a way it has
become so big, and vast, and the backbone market so entrenched, that it is nearly
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impossible to exert systematic control over the basic infrastructure. But this was not
always the case. During this phase change, the Internet was still malleable—the privately
run ISPs were still fighting ANS for influence, the interconnection agreements were still
being negotiated, and most importantly, the NSF had the opportunity—perhaps the last
opportunity—to consciously design the Internet to better ensure basic values like
competition and security. The NSF did not make use of that small window, however, and
by 1995 the Internet had hardened into its modern form. The Internet today still suffers
from that lost opportunity. In many ways, the privatization of the Internet was a
constitutional moment. And like other constitutions, it is both harder to change once it is
written, and most significant for what it did not say.
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GLOSSARY
Advanced Network Services (ANS). The nonprofit corporation formed by MERIT,IBM, and MCI in 1990 to operate and manage the NSFNET.
ANSNET. A private network run by ANS over the same wires as the NSFNET, to whichANS sold commercial access.
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). The elite research agency that built theInternet’s precursor, the ARPANET.
Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). The policy that prohibited commercial users fromaccessing the NSFNET.
Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX). The nonprofit organization that allowed the
free exchange of data among its member networks. Its model of unlimited and un-metered traffic exchange between networks became the standard for the Internet.
Computer-Science Network (CSNET). The National Science Foundation’s firstcomputer network, built in 1981 to connect computer science departments all over thecountry.
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The organization that was founded to protectthe virtual worlds of computer networks from governmental intrusion and regulation, andwhich provided the dominant voice for the creation of an all-purpose network designedfor universal accessibility.
Mitch Kapor. The cofounder of the EFF and the Chairman of the CIX, who was one of the primary advocates of the idea that the Internet should be a network for the public, not just for researchers.
Michigan Educational Research Information Triad (MERIT). The organization thatwon the five-year cooperative agreement in 1987 to manage and operate the NSFNET.MERIT, along with IBM and MCI, spun off the non-profit corporation ANS to which itsubcontracted the operation of the network.
Network Access Point (NAP). The government-sponsored Internet exchanges at whichregional networks could interconnect, which were implemented by the NSF as part of the privatization of the Internet, and which were later criticized for becoming criticallycongested.
National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET). The general-purpose researchnetwork built by the National Science Foundation to connect regional networks all over the country.
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TCP/IP Internet Protocol Suite. The set of protocols used for the Internet, which wereoriginally developed by ARPA to allow for the interconnection of disparate networks bymaking the host computers responsible for reliable communication and thus reducing therole of the network itself to the bare minimum.
Very High Speed Backbone (vBNS). The network designed to provide high-bandwidthservice to data-intensive researchers as part of the NSF’s plan for privatization.
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