Alternative DNS systems and net neutrality - Was: Re: [governance] DNSsec and allternative DNS system

Lee McKnight lmcknigh at syr.edu
Sat Nov 17 20:14:41 EST 2007


Ian,

On that note you're right, GOSIP had 'official' backing across the US
federal govt - including DOD - until very late, as the standard for
procurement by fed agencies.  And yeah Bob's stint as a DARPA program
manager wasnt that long, they tend to rotate people in with his kind of
background - ie civilian - and then send them back out after a couple
years.

So it wasn't that all of the fed govt bureaucracy backed the Internet
from earliest days, but the darpa crowd gained some key allies in the
White House when the Clinton-Gore admin came in.  

And even before then, the big historic step was the Gore Bill signed by
George Bush Sr. in 1990, which along with a lot more $ for high
performance computing, allocated $200m/yr for tresearch on the
high-speed Internet and ramping up the backbone to 45 mbps. The key
bipartsian compromise aspect was that the Republicans insisted, and Gore
accepted, that the Internet was required by law - April Fool's! - to
turn into a commercial service on April 1, 1995. 

So really you're right to say that the net wasn't so much a commercial
thing that USG or EU or anyone could back at that time, since
'commercial' service was technically prohibited by the nsf appropriate
use policy til then.

Lee

Prof. Lee W. McKnight
School of Information Studies
Syracuse University
+1-315-443-6891office
+1-315-278-4392 mobile
>>> "Ian Peter" <ian.peter at ianpeter.com> 11/17/07 6:12 PM >>>
As I understand it, Bob Kahn's background was Bell Labs, Princeton, MIT,
then contracting for BBN where he became an Arpanet contractor. So
that's
not really a military background.

Anyway others have mentioned Louis Pouzin etc - sure EU may have taken
until
mid 1990s to accept TCP/IP , but are you sure when USG adopted it across
the
bureaucracy? Despite ARPA~ use from 1983, my memory is that DOC and some
other departments stuck with OSI and GOSIP into the 1990s. Don't have a
definitive reference on hand but I would be surprised if there was
complete
USG support for TCP/IP by 1990.


Ian Peter
Ian Peter and Associates Pty Ltd
PO Box 10670 Adelaide St  Brisbane 4000
Australia
Tel (+614) 1966 7772 or (+612) 6687 0773
www.ianpeter.com
www.internetmark2.org
www.nethistory.info
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Lee McKnight [mailto:lmcknigh at syr.edu] 
Sent: 18 November 2007 09:18
To: ian.peter at ianpeter.com; governance at lists.cpsr.org;
marzouki at ras.eu.org;
veni at veni.com
Subject: RE: Alternative DNS systems and net neutrality - Was: Re:
[governance] DNSsec and allternative DNS system

Ian,

Actually, I would say Veni's take is more accurate - Bob Kahn was
working as a DARPA program manager at the time, DARPA funded all kinds
of areas of network research and functions like the IANA function for
decades - sure the net had other uses but some folks inside the US
military justified budgets for it for a long long time.  Network
survivability being an important virtue in that Cold War context.

On the other hand, the EU's official policy as last as 95, and Japan's
as late as 96, was opposed to the Internet, preferring instead more
ITUish/ATM-centric/controlled packet networks. Tim & co. came to MIT
with the web/w3c because CERN and euro industry and govt weren't ready
to back him sufficiently.   Kind of hard to get that backing if official
EU policy says the Internet is a bad thing.

Anyway, top researchers in Europe and Japan and Australia etc were part
of all this from before the beginning, so credit should go to a wide
range of folks from all over the world, but no point in pretending folks
in US military uniforms weren't signing off on budgets that got this
thing going way back when.

Lee

Prof. Lee W. McKnight
School of Information Studies
Syracuse University
+1-315-443-6891office
+1-315-278-4392 mobile
>>> ian.peter at ianpeter.com 11/17/07 11:59 AM >>>
Just to get this a little more accurate -

Although one of the sources of funding that provided for the ARPANet was
the
US military, we have to understand its origins as being in a cold war
era
when most US research funding was diverted through the military
mechanisms.
Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf were not military experts -rather they were
engaged
by universities where the tradition of making available publicly funded
research was well established.

If this had been a purely military project, it probably would have not
seen
the light of day. But then, given the work going on in Europe and
elsewhere
on emerging network protocols, something would have emerged anyway and
we
would have called it the Internet (TCP/IP is not rocket science and its
primary value is its universal adoption)

Ian Peter
Ian Peter and Associates Pty Ltd
PO Box 10670 Adelaide St  Brisbane 4000
Australia
Tel (+614) 1966 7772 or (+612) 6687 0773
www.ianpeter.com
www.internetmark2.org
www.nethistory.info
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Veni Markovski [mailto:veni at veni.com] 
Sent: 18 November 2007 02:52
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Meryem Marzouki
Subject: Re: Alternative DNS systems and net neutrality - Was: Re:
[governance] DNSsec and allternative DNS system

At 16:28 11/17/2007  +0100, you wrote:
>Veni, why do you think that being from a given country makes it
>compulsory for someone to approve and be proud of everything coming
>from this country?

Why do you think I feel that way?

And still, if the Internet was created in another country, under the 
Defence Ministry, I have my doubts it would have ended with the 
general public. I gave the example of Bulgaria, because I know the 
military system there. Perhaps we, being from Europe, are not 
thinking in the commerce world as much as the Americans; at the same 
time many of their military projects have ended up being used by the 
general public; the Internet being just one, probably the best example.
I don't admire the US military, but I think the people who made the 
Internet possible - whether by creating it, or by standardizing it, 
or by opening the code, or - you name it - deserve some credits, even 
if they are Americans. And, by the way, wasn't Tim Berners-Lee an 
English? So, how come that today, when we are all using the Internet, 
we tend to forget about all these, and about the OPEN NATURE of the
Internet?

veni 

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