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Internet Info 1994 March
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n-1-3-010.10a
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N-1-3-010-10, "Internet and NSFNET's Evolution", by Eric M. Aupperle,
<Eric.M.Aupperle@um.cc.umich.edu>
For more than two years NSFNET's future has been hotly debated in
numerous forums and by many interest groups. A major factor for this
increased interest is the rapid international growth of TCP/IP
networking resulting from NSFNET's success. The emerging market for
Internet networking is now of intense interest to many potential
vendors of services and products. Some sense of this growing market
can be seen in a recent report by The Insight Research Corp., which
predicted that the world-wide revenues for internetworking would
triple from $976.3 million in 1992 to $2.8 billion in 1996. In
addition, the current cooperative agreement for NSFNET backbone
services is scheduled to end creating the potential for new and
different models for the future NSFNET.
The market aspects of the Internet are not a new concept. The terms
"privatization" and "commercialization" were coined during the first
of two 1990 Harvard workshops. Policy questions in the changing
environment abound, such as those relating to NSFNET's focus on
high-bandwidth scientific users verses ubiquitous access for the K-12
and library communities, or the appropriateness of Acceptable Use
Policies. One focus of the collective debate on issues is NSF's next
NSFNET solicitation.
An illustration of the increasing telecommunications industry activity
in the Internet is the recent announcement by DoE and NASA of vendors
selected to upgrade their respective networking infrastructures. With
their Federal High Performance Computing and Communication program
funding, DoE and NASA chose to upgrade three of their networks using
ATM "cell" based technology provided by Sprint. Three other companies
will work with Sprint on this project; they are TRW, Cisco and Digital
Equipment Corporation. Separately, Sprint has introduced a new
commercial IP service known as SpintLink.
The growing interest of the telecommunications industry in the
Internet is healthy. This industry has enormous resources and
understands that data transport represents a major growth market. A
challenge will be how best to couple their resources and experience
with both the computer industry's data activity and products, and the
many talents of all the organizations which have contributed to the
Internet's success to date. Another challenge will be the continued
fostering of networking services for the education and research
sectors.
In part, the NSF's expected structuring of their new NSFNET & NREN
solicitation appears to facilitate the further integration of the
telecommunications industry into the evolving Internet. The long term
outcome of NSF's solicitation as well as the actual implementation of
the awarded proposals may well be as significant as NSF's commitment
to TCP/IP, and expanding connectivity for the education and research
communities were in their 1987 solicitation. Hopefully NSF's
stewardship will continue to advance global data networking as
successfully as it has for the past five years.