Soviet Network

Thu Oct 1 21:00:44 UTC 1992

 > From: Rick Adams
 >
 > So, to sum up, ANS is discriminating against users of a network
 > because of their natural origin and there is no basis in law to
 > support this position. Pretty xenophobic for a group that claims to be
 > an international provider.

As a matter of business policy, we attempt to ascertain the country of
origin for any network announced over the ANSNET backbone. We already
know that it is illegal (according to Dept. of Treasury and Commerce)
for us to exchange traffic with certain countries under any
circumstances (e.g. Irag), and only when granted a special license for
other countries (e.g. Libya, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, and
Cambodia).

CIX assumes no liability or responsibility for the networks they
announce to ANSNET.  We do not get up-to-date information on the nets
announced by the CIX including the country of origin other than by
inspecting dumps of the CIX router tables.  We only recently became
aware of the former Soviet Union network announcement from the CIX
routing table dump.

Until recently, the Soviet Union was on one of the dept. of Commerce
restriction lists.  While we have recieved some preliminary advise
that carrying transit traffic to/from the former Soviet Union is ok,
we are still awaiting verification through independent counsel that
there are no other legal liabilities.  We expect a positive reply to
this shortly (perhaps by the the actual config. run).  We do not view
this as a matter of paranoia (although others may), and this has
nothing to do with NSF, other than they have asked us not to announce
this net to the federal agency networks.  We view this verification
simply as prudent business practice.

			Jordan