MFS buys UUNET.

Tue Apr 30 20:17:43 UTC 1996

Sprintlink traditionally has approached the NAP on a customer basis
to the greatest extent possible.

We have tried quite hard to maintain both the appearance and fact 
of an arm's-length between NAP management and technical decisions 
and the two large public internets that Sprint runs.

The NAP is a creature of the Government Systems Division, and
there has always been a team of co-Principal Investigators who are not
Sprint employees, who have done an excellent job of representing
the Sprint NAP in public and in helping operate it and plan
its future.  Sprintlink, on the other hand, is a part of
Sprint Business.

The bulk of the engineering at the NAP has been done by my
colleague in GSD, Steve Schnell, whom some of you will remember
from IETFs and the like.  Steve is (unfortunately, because
he's VERY good) not directly involved with Sprintlink.

The general policy at the NAP had been managed by its 
most recently departed P.I., Bob Collet, who had not been
directly involved with Sprintlink for some months either.

Naturally, we do talk, share opinions back and forth, support
each other's efforts and products when practical, and so on,
but I have observed that this talking and sharing opinions back
and forth occurs between the NAP folks and other NAP customers too.  

In my opinion, provided that the relationship between Alternet's
engineering and the team at MFS Datanet which manages
the MAEs continues as it has, and the new merger continues
to support both sets of customers at least as well as the
individual companies used to, I see no issue on this particular front.

	Sean.