Internet II is coming...

Wed Oct 9 04:39:20 UTC 1996

>Commercialization of the 'net has made the vBNS, Internet II, etc., 
>possible at OC-(whatever).  Commercialization has pushed development of 
>router, modem, Unix, IP software, etc., technology far faster than the 
>universities ever could have pushed it.  This elitish bullshit makes me 
>want to puke.

Talk about elitish bullshit...  

Commercialization of the 'net may have pushed the development of the router,
Unix, IP software, etc., but where did all of these things come from in the
first place?  The NON-commercial R&E community, that's where.  (Modems are
probably the exception) 

Did you ever stop to think that these folks may want to come up with the
next generation network so they can make even more money for your happy
commercial ass?  (At the same time they might get some benefit out of it...)
It's a two way street buddy...  The Internet definitely wouldn't be where it
is today without commercialization, but it would be nowhere if the folks at
these universities didn't come up with many of the ideas in the first place.
We'd all have our PCs hooked up to the 9600 baud circuit-switched data port
on our ISDN telephones, having this discussion on your favorite BBS...  What
would have happened if Berkeley didn't put TCP/IP in BSD?  What if there was
no BSD?   

R&E instituions, by design, go places where the commercial sector only waits
for a money-making opportunity.  In fact, time and time again, the R&E
community creates the money-making opportunity.  I'm glad someone isn't
happy with status-quo...

--zawada

Paul J. Zawada, RCDD     | Senior Network Engineer
zawada at ncsa.uiuc.edu     | National Center for Supercomputing Applications
+1 217 244 4728          | http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/People/zawada