May COOK Report Published tonight (fwd)

Mon May 1 04:24:22 UTC 1995

I wonder how many of you have heard about the CIX plans to become THE 
Internet routing arbiter and in other ways replace the former NSFNet? 
Is there any serious possibility of their plans coming to fruition?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 1995 22:19:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: Gordon Cook <gcook at tigger.jvnc.net>
To: inet-access at earth.com
Subject: May COOK Report Published tonight

Apologies for the empty post!

CIX Reorganization.  pp. 1-7

We publish an interview with CIX Association President Bob Collet.  
In January the CIX appointed Susan Fitzgerald as its new Executive 
Director.  Given the uncertain situation of the CIX, Susan's position 
is part time while she continues to run her network consulting 
company.  Nevertheless Collet and Fitzgerald have been hard at 
work on a strategic plan and telecom white paper designed to turn 
the CIX  into a trade association.  While the CIX is still running its 
router and filtering has just gone into effect, the environment of 
the Internet has been so totally transformed since last summer 
that that the interconnect and peering services offered by the CIX 
router have become essentially meaningless with the opening of 
the NAPs and MAE West and the expansion of MAE-East.  

However, the change in network topology has done interesting 
things to the cost of directly connecting to the core Internet.  A 
year ago this could be done via a connection at the CIX router for 
perhaps $40,000 a year for the membership, connect fee and T-1 
transit to the router.  Now connection at T-3 speeds to multiple 
NAPs is necessary at a base cost that we estimate to be about 
$400,000 a year.

The CIX task force that was recruited when Collet became 
President late last November has turned its attention to such tasks 
as the definition of lobbying positions before the FCC in an effort to 
keep a level field for ISPs faced with the entry of RBOCs into their 
markets.  In its Strategic Plan it has also outlined a new 
infrastructure model of High Bandwidth Packet Exchange Points 
(HPEPs), First Tier Providers, Large ISPs and Third Tier Prodivers 
which may aggregate their traffic in Packet Exchange Points before 
being sent on the HPEPs.  One of the possible roles posited for the 
CIX is providing the basic language of interconnect agreements 
between the various levels of the new infrastructure. Running a 
routing registry for members is another possible service for 
members that is discussed.

While press accounts list 155 members Susan Fitzgerald told us 
that the current count is actually 145.  She said this figured is 
taken from the total number of networks that had ever joined the 
CIX, including the large number that signed up last fall paying a 
partial year's fee in order to be able to attend the Atlanta 
membership meeting.  Critical to the CIX's future will be the 
number who pay 1995 dues.  Because the first thing that Fitzgerald 
had to do was reorganize the CIX's books, invoices for 1995 dues 
were not even sent out until February. Members will have until 
June 1 to pay up in order to attend the membership meeting at I-
Net in Hawaii later that month.  The Strategic Plan and Telecom 
White Paper were sent to memebrs on March 30, with the hope 
that they would give members sufficient reason to renew.  With 
only a single tier of dues set at $7500 a year, our guess is that the 
number of members at the June meeting will be much diminished 
from the current 145 total. Last week NYSERnet announced that it 
would not be renewing its CIX membership - not a good sign for 
the future viability of the CIX.

While there is nothing about the program that Collet has put 
together that looks especially negative to us, there are parts of the 
infrastructure model design that may not be well received by all 
quarters.  More important however is the question of 
communication with the network community at large.  If the CIX is 
ever again to speak for the preponderance of the commercial 
internet, those on its Board must take the organization's new 
program before the internet community as a whole and argue 
openly for its support.  The fact that we have not seen this happen 
combined with an increasingly active role by an Internet Society 
showing signs of wanting to move into the vacuum created by the 
end of the NSFnet, is not a sign that bodes well for the CIX's future.

ISOC, Network 
Infrastructure, IETF & NAPs  pp.1, 8 -9 

Who will put money into commercial   domain  name registration 
and into the IETF is a current critical topic among  Internet policy 
makers.  We state some NSF assumptions on these issues, publish 
responses from ISOC Director Tony Rutkowskii and describe the 
decision taken by the Federal Networking Council to continue 
supporting IETF to the tune of nearly 1.5 million a year in order to 
be certain that IETF maintains its independence.  Updates on 
PacBell and Ameritech NAPs - including a PacBell communications 
slip.

MCI May Impose Metered Pricing pp. 10 - 11 

MCI's John Houser side stepped our questions  after New 
Hampshire ISP asserted that his MCI sales reps had said metered 
pricing would begin some time in May.

Routing in the Post NSFnet World, pp. 12-16

The MERIT Policy Routing Data Base is being replaced by the 
Routing Arbiter Database and Route Servers.  But in the new 
decentralized multiple backbone world we have just enetered, not 
everyone has committed to use the Routing Arbiter.  This 
combined with heavy pressure on Sprint's routers, caused Sprint to 
begin to restrict  the portability of some CIDR blocks for routing 
purposes.  After a heavy flame war between  Sprint, PSI and 
MCSnet, the likely out come will be to restrict greatly the 
portability of IP numbers obtained via CIDR blocs should a 
customer using those numbers  decide to change providers.

Access Indiana Revisited, pp. 17-20

The award of the state preferred provider contract has been 
delayed until late May.  In the meantime it has become clear that a 
centralized head end, top down model into which all community 
networks will be plugged is intended.  A 12 county private sector  
effort to link K-12 schools  was polity told to stand aside in early 
April since it would be duplicating the centralized effort of state 
government.  When a private ISP offered to extend service into a 
rural community, she was also rebuffed.  Ameritech, State Dept of 
Education and State Library money is going  not into community 
owned infrastructure but rather should go according to organizer 
Ed Tully into professional web page design so that Indiana 
communities will have attractive content to give a state choosen 
central provider.  When many communities said they had adequate 
talent to design their own Web pages, Tully sharply disagreed.

Washington State Porn Bill  pp. 21-22

Under this grossly misguided legislation now on Governor Mark 
Lowry's desk, ISPs would be liable to the tune of $5000 a day and 
one year in jail for each instance of pornographic material found on 
their systems by minors.  The legislation would effectively force 
ISPs to deny access to minors.

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