between water and ice: the formative transition from the nsfnet to the modern internet

8/14/2019 Between Water and Ice: The Formative Transition from the NSFNET to the Modern Internet

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BETWEEN WATER AND ICE:

THE FORMATIVE TRANSITION FROM THE NSFNETTO THE MODERN INTERNET

Daniel Selsam2008



CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.................................................................................................4

INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................5

1. Background: The ARPANET Transitions to TCP/IP................................10

2. CSNET: The NSF’s First Major Computer Network is Simple andSuccessful..................................................................................................12

3. NSFNET: The NSF Builds a General-Purpose Network for the ResearchCommunity................................................................................................14

4. NREN: Congress Envisions a National Research and Education Network but Gives Few Details................................................................................18

5. Privatization: Yes, But How?....................................................................20

6. An Alternative Vision: The National Public Network...............................22

7. Haphazard Commercialization: Two Rival Internets Emerge

• ANS................................................................................................24

• CIX.................................................................................................32

8. Conflict and Resolution: The Triumph of the CIX....................................34

9. Meanwhile: The NSF Makes Plans to Privatize the NSFNET Entirely. . ..40

10. The Fall of the CIX and the Rise of the Large Backbone Providers..... .. ..44

11. Evaluating the NSF’s Plan for Privatization: A Lost Opportunity............47

12. The Internet Boom.....................................................................................50

CONCLUSION..................................................................................................................52

GLOSSARY......................................................................................................................55

BIBLIOGRAPHY..............................................................................................................57

3



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my advisor at Wesleyan University, Professor Paul

Erickson, for helping me at every step of the way, and for always encouraging me to dig

deeper and deeper into this confusing and poorly documented period until the story

finally started to make sense.

4



Introduction

“It's a ‘phase change’ – like moving from ice to water; ice is simple and water is simple, but in the middle of the change it's mush – part monopoly, part franchise, part open

competition. We want to manage that transition.”1

–Al Gore, on the privatization of the Internet, 12/21/93.

Although much has been written about the history of the Internet, most accounts

focus on two distinct historical epochs, both of which have their own clearly defined

narratives. During the 1970’s and the early 1980’s, the Internet was a grand research

experiment conducted by elite technologists at the Advanced Research Project Agency

(ARPA) under the aegis of the U.S. military, connecting just a few of the most

prestigious research facilities in the country. Then starting in the mid 1990’s, the Internet

became the great universal network phenomenon, emerging from hundreds and thousands

of poorly-dressed geniuses working out of their garages in Silicon Valley, and driven by

the insatiable desire of people all over the world to share information freely. Yet most

accounts only gloss over the period between these two stages, during which the National

Science Foundation (NSF) built its own network, the NSFNET, while a privately run

Internet emerged around it and eventually overtook it. As a result, this crucial phase of

the Internet’s development has never been properly integrated into the larger story of the

creation of the Internet.

This omission exists in part because during the intermediate stage the Internet was

transitioning between the two distinct stages; it was half research network, half

commercial network, and part government-run, part privately run, and thus was much

more resistant to easy classification. Corresponding to this conceptual confusion, the

1 Remarks by Vice President Al Gore at National Press Club, December 21, 1993.Available at http://www.ibiblio.org/nii/goremarks.html (accessed December 14, 2008).

5

http://www.ibiblio.org/nii/goremarks.html





sources needed to make sense of the story are scattered and obscure. Dr. Doug Gale,

former network administrator at the NSF, calls this period the Internet’s “Dark Ages,”

since while the record of the early stage was preserved by ARPA’s extensive

documentation, and while the record of the later stage was preserved by extensive press

coverage of all the successful Internet companies, the NSFNET stage was “an

extraordinarily decentralized process” and “the record [only] exists in people’s basements

[and] closets.”2 Yet while it is true that the record exists in people’s basements and

closets, the record also exists in emails, online mailing lists, newspaper and journal

articles, contract solicitations, commissioned reports, legislation and congressional

hearings, almost all of which are accessible by anyone through the Internet itself.3 This is

not just a coincidence, or a testament to the breadth of content on the Internet; rather, the

Internet we know today literally developed around the computers that partook in the

events of this intermediate period. With enough persistence, it is possible to find these

computers and the documents they contain, and thus to uncover the history of this period,

which has been buried by layers and layers of additional content since the Internet’s

popularity exploded.

In addition to this period’s lack of a clear narrative and the obscurity of its

sources, scholars have neglected to write about this period in part because it was not

considered to be very important. During the 1990’s, the Internet’s dramatic rise in

popularity made it seem as if the Internet’s history was teleological, leading inexorably to

the naturally emergent—and flawless—universal network. But in reality, the privatization

was not the total success that everyone thought it was in the mid 1990’s. Once the frenzy

2 “Illuminating the net’s Dark Ages.”3 “Illuminating the net’s Dark Ages.”

6



of Internet idealization began to wear off at the end of the decade, the persistent

dominance of a few large backbone providers and the increasing threat of malicious

hackers prompted a handful of legal scholars to consider the effect the NSF’s

privatization policies had had on the Internet’s infrastructure. In 2001, Jay P. Kesan and

Rajiv C. Shah co-published an article titled “Fool Us Once Shame On You—Fool Us

Twice Shame On Us” in the Washington University Law Quarterly, which concluded that

the NSF privatization was in fact deeply flawed, and that it was directly responsible for

many of the Internet’s lingering problems. While the article does provide an important

contribution to the scholarship of the late NSFNET period, by its nature as a legal essay,

it focuses predominantly on the shortcomings of a few specific NSF policies and their

ramifications, while overlooking the broader historical developments of the period. A

comprehensive history of this period still remains to be written.

To fill this gap in the Internet’s history, I will examine the development of the

Internet from 1986 to 1995, focusing on its transition from being a government-run

network restricted to researchers to being a privately run network open to anyone. The

NSF had to build the NSFNET itself in order to connect its researchers to national

supercomputer sites in 1986, since there was no market for high-bandwidth network

services at the time. But over the next seven years, spurred on in part by the demand

generated by the NSFNET, a market for commercial network services emerged that could

potentially provide the nation’s researchers with high-bandwidth Internet service without

the NSF’s continued management. And so people’s understanding of the Internet

underwent a paradigm shift—it went from being a high-tech communications system

built to order to just being a standardized commodity. Rather than continue to pay for its

7



own backbone network, the NSF arranged for the research community to buy service

from competing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) instead, thus finalizing the Internet’s

new form as a purely private network.

Yet as Al Gore remarked, during the “phase change” between these two states, the

Internet was mush—the NSF’s unimaginative and non-transparent policies created

conflict, confusion and chaos, and led briefly to the development of two rival Internets:

the ANSNET, which was run in cooperation with the NSF, and the CIX, which was run

entirely by the private sector. The NSF had originally planned on simply giving the

ANSNET to the non-profit corporation ANS, but complaints and accusations from the

Internet community caused the NSF to stall its flawed plan for rapid privatization and to

reexamine its policies in light of public concerns. The discussion that followed broadened

the NSF’s narrow vision and gave voice to many interested parties, including researchers,

regional networks, commercial service providers, ideological organizations,

telecommunications companies and other governmental agencies. Most importantly,

however, it stalled the NSF’s privatization process for several years, during which time

the privately run Internet flourished on its own, and a handful of large backbone

providers came to dominate the market. The Internet was growing so quickly, in fact, that

the NSF was losing its ability to even influence it at all.

But the NSF had one last piece of leverage over the private Internet: the entire

research community was still accessing the Internet for free courtesy of the NSF, and the

private ISPs wanted the researchers to pay them for service instead. In the process of

privatizing this last remaining element of the government-sponsored network, the NSF

had one final opportunity to exert influence over the Internet’s infrastructure. But the

8



NSF was rushed, overworked, and unqualified to manage such a large privatization

process, and as a result the NSF ultimately ignored many of the requests made of it and

implemented a flawed plan for privatization. In doing so, they wasted what may have

been the last opportunity that any agency or institution ever had to exert systematic

influence over the structure of the Internet. Although the shortcomings of the NSF’s plan

were subtle, they turned out to be more insidious and long lasting as well—most of the

problems that emerged from the rushed privatization still plague the Internet today. But

the dramatic rise in popularity of the Internet following the privatization and the

commercial success of many diverse ISPs provided such economies of scale that the new

Internet was able to please and impress most everybody within a short period of time.

Consequently, the underlying problems that developed as a result of the shortcomings of

the NSF’s plan went largely unnoticed and unquestioned until legal scholars began

examining them nearly a decade later.

Yet even despite the more recent recognition of this transition’s importance,

scholars have still avoided writing about this period in depth. It is not hard to see why. As

explored above, there is no clearly defined narrative and the necessary sources are

scattered and obscure. Furthermore, the story itself is often convoluted and bizarrely

complex, with most groups and agencies acting simultaneously with only limited

communication between them. Even the people involved did not always seem to

understand what was happening, whom they were dealing with, or what was expected of

them. Yet we must brave through this mess, for the Internet’s transition from a

government-run network restricted to researchers to a privately run network open to

anyone is surely one of the most crucial chapters in the history of the modern world.

9



Background: The ARPANET Transitions to TCP/IP

The early stages of the Internet’s history are both relatively well known and

relatively straightforward. The Internet’s precursor, the ARPANET, was originally built

by ARPA’s elite technologists as a grand experiment in a “climate of pure research.”4

ARPA, which stands for the Advanced Research Projects Agency, was created in 1958 as

a response to the launching of the Sputnik satellite by the Soviet Union in order to foster

radical innovation for the U.S. military. With no pressure to meet any short-term

deadlines, ARPA was “the place for people with ideas too crazy, too far out and too risky

for most research organizations…[ARPA was] an organization willing to take a risk on

an idea long before it is proven.”5 Although networking technology became essential to

the U.S. military soon after, ARPANET was originally built as a bold venture before its

intended uses were entirely evident.

The ARPANET launched in 1969 employing the somewhat primitive Network

Control Protocol (NCP), and by 1970 it connected thirteen elite research sites all over the

country.6 During the 1970s, while the network was actively used by the military and elite

researchers alike, the military sought to develop internetworking technology that would

allow the effective interconnection of ARPANET with other types of networks that the

military employed, including radio, satellite, and local area networks.7 The result was the

TCP/IP Internet Protocol Suite, which allowed for the interconnection of disparate

4 Michael Hauben, “History of ARPANET.”5 DARPA Mission, at http://www.darpa.mil/mission.html 6 Moschovitis, 110 and “DARPA and the Internet Revolution.”7 Abbate, 122 & Moschovitis, 110.

10

http://www.darpa.mil/mission.html





networks by making the host computers responsible for reliable communication and thus

reducing the role of the network itself to the bare minimum. These new protocols allowed

the military to combine its disparate networks into one unified network, which enabled

communication between command centers, labs, field operatives, and overseas facilities,

thus making each individual network significantly more useful.

To encourage the implementation of TCP/IP, ARPA made all of the research

related to the protocols public and open to everyone.8 This included specifications on

how to build TCP/IP software and how to install it on a host computer.9 ARPA also

established a $20 million fund to help computer manufacturers implement TCP/IP on

their products.10 By the end of the decade, many of the ARPANET sites had begun

transitioning from the NCP protocols to the TCP/IP protocols, but given the lack of

standardization among different computers and operating systems, it often took enormous

effort to do so. To speed up the process, Major Joseph Haughney announced in 1981 that

all ARPANET hosts would be required to adopt TCP/IP by January of 1983, or risk being

terminated from the network.11 Following this transition, the new TCP/IP based

ARPANET, as well as the other TCP/IP based networks that it was connected to, were

collectively referred to as the Internet, while the ARPANET was consider the Internet’s

“backbone”.12 A few months later, in the face of growing concerns that malicious users

might hack into the military’s computers through the Internet, the military split off its

networks from the Internet and formed the separate and more secure MILNET, leaving

8 Comer, 56.9 Ibid, 56.10 Abbate, 143.11 Ibid, 140.12 Moschovitis, 110.

11



the Internet as an entirely civilian network.13 But it was still only accessible to researchers

at the few elite universities that had ARPA contracts.

CSNET: The NSF’s First Major Computer Network is Simple and Successful

In the late 1970’s, the few computer scientists that had ARPANET access reaped

significant advantages from their network service, including access to specialized

mainframe computers and the ability to easily collaborate with other (elite) computer

scientists.

14

Computer scientists without these resources were at a disadvantage, and

many began to organize in order to seek funding from the government to provide them

with network access. In 1979, a group headed by Lawrence Landweber, the chairman of

the University of Wisconsin’s computer science department, submitted a proposal to the

NSF for a new network (to be called CSNET) to connect computer science departments

all over the country. The network would have employed the X.25 protocol, rather than

the TCP/IP protocol that the ARPANET was transitioning to, and thus would be have

been separate from the existing network community. The proposal was rejected, but in

1981, with the help of Vinton Cerf from ARPA, the group submitted a second proposal

that was accepted for a network that would employ the TCP/IP protocols and that would

interconnect with the ARPANET.

The new plan benefited both existing ARPANET users and the new CSNET users

by allowing all computer scientists to communicate over the same network. Furthermore,

the new plan allowed a gradation of cost by allowing computer science departments to

13 Abbate, 143.14 Ibid, 183.

12



no commercial market for networking services, and so no companies felt that the NSF

was unfairly competing with them for clients. Nor were there any companies interested in

accessing the CSNET, and thus there was no petition to allow commercial usage of the

network. And finally, besides ARPA, the rest of the federal government knew little about

the network and expressed no interest. Because so few parties were involved, and the

CSNET was able to please those that were at little cost, there was no need for the NSF to

open the network to commercialization.

NSFNET: The NSF Builds a General-Purpose Network for the Research

Community

As early as the late 1960’s, the NSF had been building regional computing centers

and subsidizing regional academic networks in order to provide computing resources to

as many researchers as possible. Although the NSF realized the value that computer

networks could provide research communities in terms of communication and

collaboration, the main focus of these early regional networks was to provide access to

expensive computer resources. This was the age of mainframe computers and centralized

processing, and it was often cost prohibitive for an individual lab to have its own

computer. The regional networks were able to provide access to the regional computing

centers for less than it would have cost to supply each lab with its own computer

powerful enough for its needs. But by the mid 1980’s the system of regional networks

was insufficient for the needs of the scientific community. Research everywhere was

becoming increasingly dependent on computation, and the NSF sought to dramatically

14



expand its computer-networking program.

In 1984, the National Science Foundation built several new supercomputer

centers scattered throughout the United States. In order to make the supercomputers

widely available to the research and education community, the NSF built a national

network to link the supercomputers. The NSF planned for the network to be three-tired.

The top-tier would be the national backbone, which the NSF planned to build and operate

directly and which would be called the NSFNET. The backbone would connect to all of

the supercomputing sites, as well as to several nodes at which various regional networks

could connect. The middle-tier would be composed of the regional networks. The NSF

had already subsidized the creation of several regional networks in the preceding

decades, most of which were run by academic consortia, and the NSF planned to

subsidize the creation of many more all over the country that would be able to connect to

the NSFNET as well. The lowest-tier would be the individual campus networks, which

would connect in turn to the regional networks.

The NSFNET launched in 1986, but in a severely limited way. It only connected

six nodes and operated at the limited speed of 56 Kbps. Further, it employed a set of

protocols referred to as the “fuzzball” protocols, rather than TCP/IP, and as such could

not easily interconnect with the ARPANET, which, as explored above, had become

entirely TCP/IP as of 1983.18 Like the original regional networks, the primary focus of

the NSFNET was to pool computing resources by providing researchers all over the

country with access to the supercomputers. That is not to say that the NSF did not realize

18 Abbate, 193. MERIT’s Final Report suggests that the NSFNET could interconnect withthe ARPANET from the beginning, and so it is not entirely clear which protocols the firstgeneration NSFNET used or how effectively it was able to interconnect with theARPANET.

15



the importance of communication and collaboration among researchers—especially after

the success of the CSNET, it was clear how invaluable a large network could be to a

research community. But at this point the NSF was primarily concerned with providing

access to computer resources, and the benefits of the network community came as a

bonus.

The NSF encouraged general access of the NSFNET, however, by not restricting

access to supercomputer researchers and instead allowing all academic users to access the

network. Most other government-run networks at the time were restricted to a specific set

of specialized users; the NSF was the first agency to encourage all researchers to join the

NSFNET regardless of discipline or needs.19 Although the NSFNET still employed

“fuzzball” protocols and was not yet part of the Internet, the decision to allow general

access was a significant step towards the realization of a single national network not

Balkanized by individual functions.

NSFNET usage grew faster than the NSF had imagined. After the launch of the

NSFNET in 1986, users from all over the country began sharing all sorts of information

with each other in a decentralized manner in addition to accessing the supercomputer

facilities. Researchers of all kinds took a liking to the network and enjoyed exploring it

and communicating with its members. By the middle of 1987, the increasing network

usage had exhausted the limits of the first generation NSFNET backbone, and the NSF

sought to significantly upgrade the network as quickly as possible.

The new network would connect to many more sites, operate at T1 (1.5 Mbps, up

from 56 Kbps), employ TCP/IP protocols, interconnect with ARPANET and take over

ARPANET’s role as the primary backbone of the Internet. Because of the scale and

19 National Science Foundation, “The Launch of the NSFNET.”

16



expense of the project, the NSF sought a cooperative agreement with a third-party

organization that would construct and manage the backbone. On June 15 th, 1987, the

National Science Foundation issued a Project Solicitation for Management and

Operation of the NSFNET Backbone Network (NSF 87-37). The five-year cooperative

agreement was awarded to the Michigan Educational Research Information Triad

(MERIT), which offered the lowest bid by a significant margin. One of the reasons

MERIT was able to offer such a low bid was their proposed system of cost sharing. The

State of Michigan, MCI, and IBM were all going to provide resources to MERIT to

subsidize the project. IBM and MCI were both eager to contribute because they thought

that the project would give them a head start in what promised to be a growing field, as

well as provide opportunities for technology transfer .20

NREN: Congress Envisions a National Research and Education Network but Gives

Few Details

While the NSF developed its own national research network in the form of the

NSFNET, Congress began to see the importance and promise of a national computer

network, and requested that the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) write a

report that explored the Federal Government’s options for advancing the nation’s

computer networking. The Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering, and

20 MERIT, NSFNET Final Report, 8.

17



Technology (FCCSET) completed the report in 1987, which called for a concerted effort

to create a national research network by the year 2000.21 The two main objectives

outlined in the report were to provide network service to all of the nation’s researchers,

and to stimulate R&D in networking technology to advance the nation’s industry

competitiveness.22

The buzzword in Congress had become the NREN (or the National Research and

Education Network), which was curiously distinct from the Internet. At this point in time,

the NSFNET, the ARPANET and the other TCP/IP based networks that connected to

them were considered the Internet, but the Internet did not yet have the connotation of the

universal network that it has today. Although the Internet Protocols were designed to

allow internetworking between different types of networks, it was still only a network of

networks rather than the network of networks, and the FCCSET report did not make it

clear that the Internet would eventually become the fruition of the NREN vision. Rather

the NREN referred to the envisioned high-speed backbone network itself, and although

the NREN was to connect with all other federal networks, it was not specifically

delineated that it would serve as the backbone for a universal network based on TCP/IP

protocols. And although the NSF was in the process of developing a network for the

nation’s researchers, the FCCSET only mentioned the NSF as one of five federal

agencies with computer networks, alongside the Department of Defense, NASA, Health

and Human Services, and the Department of Energy, and did not indicate that the NSF

would take a leadership role in the development of the NREN. The report instead

suggested that the five agencies listed above collaborate on the NREN project.

21 High Performance Computing and Networking for Science—Background Paper, 25.22 Ibid , 25.

18



A follow-up report released in 1989 provided a more detailed plan for

implementing the NREN vision by dividing the project into three-stages: first, to upgrade

and interconnect the networks of the five groups into a jointly funded and managed T1

network; second, to integrate the national networks into a T3 backbone by 1993; and

third, to create a multi-Gbps NREN by the mid 1990’s.23 The 1989 report also declared

that the third and final stage would “include a specific, structured process resulting in

transition of the network from a government operation to a commercial service,” and

gave NSF the leadership role in managing the network upgrades and in eventually

transitioning the network to private management.

But although the FCCSET reports provided a solid overview of the goals for the

NREN, it did not address issues related to commercial access, competition with

commercial providers, or the management of the network. Furthermore, there were still

uncertainties in many elements of the project, such as the scope, pricing, management,

policies, and role of the private sector. Congress commissioned a report from the Office

of Technology Assessment (OTA) in 1989 to investigate and clarify many of the

unresolved issues concerning the NREN. The report explored—though offered few

solutions to—many of the tensions and ambiguities that surrounded the NREN vision, as

well as the issues that might arise as the research network interacted with the private

sector. However, it is not clear what agency if any was given the task of considering the

issues that the OTA report raised.

Privatization: Yes, But How?

23 Ibid , 32.

19



The goal of eventually privatizing the Internet was part of a larger trend towards

increased private control of telecommunications networks. By the late 1980’s both

political parties were against excessive government intervention in the

telecommunications industry, and both encouraged deregulating the industry and

allowing several firms to openly compete for clients.24 This trend is itself an element of a

broader reluctance towards excessive government intervention in commercial markets—

and excessive government spending—that grew out of the small-government ethos of the

Reagan years. Privatization was considered a win-win situation; not only would it allow

more choices for network users and more opportunities for network providers, but it

would also cost less.

As computer networking gained popularity in the late 1980’s, it was clear that

nationwide networks would eventually become commercially feasible. Conflict would

then be inevitable between a government-run network and any number of competing

commercial networks. Therefore the general consensus in Washington was that the

government would get out of the way entirely once commercial network providers could

meet the needs of the nation’s researchers. But questions still remained: first, how to tell

when commercial networks become adequately robust, and second, how best to manage

the transition period when nationwide commercial networks exist, but while none are yet

capable of meeting researchers’ high-speed demands.

A third question remained as well: how exactly to privatize the NREN. Although

by 1989 Congress had made it clear that the network would eventually be privatized,

there had been no formal exploration of what the process would entail. The 1989

FCCSET report gave the NSF a leadership role in the development of the NREN and in

24 “The Privatization of the Internet’s Backbone Network,” 2.

20



managing the privatization, but it gave no specifics. William Wulf of the NSF testified

before Congress in 1989 that since the FCCSET report was not clear about how to

privatize the network, the NSF would fund studies to explore its options.25 The NSF

began holding workshops, most notably two workshops at Harvard University in 1990

and 1991, in which many different interest groups discussed possible approaches to

privatizing the Internet. Although some considered the workshops to be unnecessarily

exclusive—the first one was invitation only and the second one cost between $750 and

$1500 to attend—many different views were represented, including those of researchers,

economists, policy experts, and telecommunications companies.

26

The NSF had

informally planned on simply giving control of the entire backbone network to MERIT

when the five-year cooperative agreement expired in 1992, but its uninspired plan faced

strong opposition from many interest groups, especially from the Federation of American

Research Networks (FARNet) and EDUCOM (a group representing University

computing interests), both of which insisted that regional networks be given a choice in

which backbone provider to buy service from.27 Following the workshops and other

discussions with interested parties, the NSF found a “broad consensus” that it should

transition the Internet to the hands of a few competing private companies.28

An Alternative Vision: The National Public Network

While engineers, bureaucrats and legislators in Washington D.C. made their plans

25 “Fool us Once,” 114.26 Ibid, 135.27 Cook, “Whom shall it serve?”28 Abbate, 197.

21



for a research network, a group of libertarians on the other side of the country were

developing an alternative vision for a national network that would be designed first and

foremost for the public at large. The interest group representing this vision, the Electronic

Frontier Foundation, advocated the consideration of broader public values throughout the

privatization process, and suggested striving for a National Public Network (NPN)

instead of a National Research and Education Network (NREN).

John Perry Barlow, a former Grateful Dead lyricist and Wyoming cattle rancher,

began using computer networks in 1987 to connect with other members of the Grateful

Dead community. He met many fellow Dead Heads through an online bulletin board and

in turn developed a deep appreciation for the power of computer networks to provide

opportunities that transcended traditional limitations of geography. The poet inside him

began to see the virtual world of computer networks as a place in itself, and he coined the

name “electronic frontier” to describe this strange new world. He envisioned an exotic,

post-territorial order in which people lived together in peace and liberated themselves

from all rules and oppression.29

Yet despite Barlow’s ideals, the government did intrude on this space. In 1990 the

United States Secret Service tracked an illegally copied document through the Internet,

and ended up confiscating computers and documents from Steve Jackson Games, a small-

time publisher. The Service retained the items for a long time, forcing the publisher to

miss deadlines and lay off workers, and when it finally returned the computer all private

emails had been individually accessed and deleted.30 The publisher sought a civil liberties

group to help him file a lawsuit against the Secret Service, but no existing institution was

29 Goldsmith, 17.30 EFF, “A History of Protecting Freedom Where Law and Technology Collide.”

22



interested in the case.

News of Steve Jackson Games’ run-in with the Secret Service convinced Barlow

that the “electronic frontier” needed to be defended from the oppressive intrusion of

territorial government. Barlow recruited fellow libertarians Mitch Kapor and John

Gilmore, and together founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in 1990 to

protect the virtual worlds of computer networks from governmental intrusion and

regulation. They gained publicity in the computer industry for representing the Steve

Jackson Games case, and attracted many wealthy donors, including both individuals

interested in libertarianism and big corporations like Microsoft that sought legal

insulation from government regulation.31

Throughout the next several years, the EFF provided the dominant voice for the

creation of an all-purpose network designed for universal accessibility. In 1991, Mitch

Kapor of the EFF posted a paper titled "The Privatized NREN" in which he advocated the

creation of a National Public Network (NPN), which would represent the convergence of

the NREN with the analog telephony public switched network. Kapor envisioned a

network run entirely by the private sector, in which all of the government’s desired users

would buy network service from commercial providers as though it were any other

commodity.32 Furthermore, he sought to establish a mandatory interconnection policy so

that all network service providers would have the right to freely interconnect with the

NPN.33 In essence, Kapor wanted the government to ensure that the network remained

open and free, with low barriers to entry so that diversity and public choice could

blossom. Kapor’s value-based vision contrasts strongly with the highly technical visions

31 Goldsmith, 19.32 Mitch Kapor, “The Privatized NREN.”33 Ibid.

23



emanating from Washington. Although the name ‘National Public Network’ never caught

on, the basic idea of the Internet as a public service did, and it became an increasingly

influential idea as the decade progressed.

Haphazard Commercialization: Two Rival Internets Emerge

ANS

In July 1988, the new NSFNET T1 backbone became operational, connecting

thirteen regional networks, including more than 170 campus networks.

34

Demand for

NSFNET access continued to surge, and network traffic generally rose about 10% per

month. In June 1989, the NSF approved an increase in the authorization limit of what the

NSF could pay MERIT, from $14 million to $20 million, in order to enhance the network

and increase its overall capacity. But soon after the increase it became clear that even the

planned upgrade would not be sufficient to handle the increasing network traffic. While

the NSF sought more funding from Congress to upgrade the entire backbone network to

T3, it also became clear that the scope of the project would be too large and complex for

the NSF’s Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) staff of 14.35

The dramatic growth of the network along with limited funds and resources made

the NSF dependent on external assistance—in this case from IBM, MCI, and MERIT—to

continue to expand the network. While the NSF struggled to keep up with the network’s

growing needs, IBM began making its own plans to upgrade the network to T3. At this

point, IBM was the aging giant of the mainframe computer age and was beginning to lose

34 National Science Foundation, “The Launch of the NSFNET”35 Cook, “NSFNET ‘Privatization’ and the Public Interest”, Part I

24



its relevance as the market shifted away from large mainframes and towards personal

computers, a sector in which IBM had had only limited success. Its supporting role in the

management of the NSFNET gave IBM a foot in the door in the growing networking

industry, and IBM sought to capitalize on its position by spearheading a bold expansion

of the network. The NSF’s inability to adequately support the expansion of the network

provided IBM with a unique opportunity to gain more experience with network

technology, more control over the blossoming network, and also to reinvigorate itself in

the process.36

IBM, MCI, and MERIT decided to spin off a corporation that would take over the

management of the NSFNET backbone, and that would try to find new ways to fund the

continued development of the network infrastructure. Their main plan was to attract

commercial users to the network, and to charge them higher fees in order to fund the

continued development of the network. They needed the NSF’s approval to do so,

however, because the NSFNET Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) prohibited commercial

users from accessing the NSFNET. In June 1990, Doug van Houwelling, Chairman of

MERIT, sent the NSF a letter declaring the groups’ plan. As Gordon Cook writes of the

letter, “The tone does not ask permission. Rather it states a fact and invites the

government to approve retroactively.”37 Stephen Wolff agreed on the NSF’s behalf that

MERIT could subcontract its responsibilities under the Cooperative Agreement, and

further stated that the new corporation “may solicit and attach to the NSFNET backbone

new users, including commercial users…with the understanding that 1) such users will

reimburse [the new corporation] for at least the full average cost of the connection, the

36 Ibid.37 Ibid.

25



added traffic, and additional related support, and 2) the reimbursements will be used to

enhance the network infrastructure and services, in order that the level of service

provided by MERIT under its Cooperative Agreement with NSF not be diminished.” 38

Following the green light from the NSF, MERIT, IBM, and MCI formed a nonprofit

corporation called Advanced Network Services (ANS) and subcontracted the operation

and management of the NSFNET to it. In May of 1991, ANS spun off a for-profit

corporation called ANS CO+RE Systems, Inc. (CO+RE) to sell commercial Internet

service under the conditions laid out above.

Although the NSF approved these actions, it did so in haste without ever

consulting the White House, the OSTP, or the National Science Board.39 Yet while its

failure to consult other agencies about this drastic change of plan is curious, the NSF had

little choice but to agree to MERIT’s requests. The NSF had neither the funds, nor the

resources, nor the expertise to execute the T3 upgrade, and given the short time frame

before the current network would become inadequate, the NSF had very little bargaining

power over MERIT, IBM, and MCI. The NSF was therefore at the whim of those with

the resources to advance the development of the network backbone. But in the haste of

the agreement, the NSF failed to clearly spell out goals or benchmarks, or to consider the

many complications that might arise, and the agreement ultimately created significant

conflict throughout the network community.

The subcontracting of the management of the backbone to ANS was problematic

above all because the NSF and ANS had conflicting goals. The NSF valued computer

networking among other reasons as a way to provide American researchers with

38 Office of Inspector General, “Review of NSFNET”39 Cook, “NSFNET ‘Privatization’ and the Public Interest”, Part I

26



resources for computation and collaboration. ANS, on the other hand, valued radical

technological development first and foremost, and was eager to raise money in order to

expand the network, even if that money came at the direct expense of the research

community. This reordering of priorities can be seen in ANS’ self-declared charter:

ANS was formed to participate in enhancing the competitiveness of the US inhigh performance computer networking by privatizing and expanding the currentnational backbone network serving the research and education community….With the formation of ANS, a transition will be required and mechanics must becreated to allow for the conversion from a research effort to a viable privatizedentity to carry out the mission.40

It is important to note that ANS was formed to accomplish those efforts by MERIT , not

by the NSF, and that the NSF’s main goal for the network upgrade at this point was still

primarily to serve the research and education community as increasing usage

overwhelmed the current infrastructure. But ANS had the boldness and the leverage to

strive for its vision with little NSF interference.

ANS CEO Al Weis exemplified ANS’s high-tech fervor. He had been in charge

of the supercomputing division at IBM, but had become convinced that computer

networking was displacing supercomputing as the technology of the age, and that

national high-speed networks would be essential for American competitiveness. Internet

analyst Gordon Cook described Weis as “one of those people who are infatuated with the

development of leading edge technology” and that since he thought gigabit networking

was the next big thing, “he was moving to where the new action would be.” Under

Weis’s leadership, ANS focused almost exclusively on planning radical upgrades and

raising the revenues to do it, while often ignoring the wants and needs of the existing

network community. 41

40 Cook, “NSFNET ‘Privatization’ and the Public Interest”, Part II41 Ibid.

27



ANS planned to raise money through several channels, but with the exception of

one that was unsuccessful, all of them came at the expense of the mid-level networks and

thus at the expense of the research community at large. ANS’s strategy was threefold.

First, it planned to connect new commercial users directly to its network. In theory this

would have helped subsidize the research community, but ANS had very little success in

attracting commercial customers. At this point, ANS was running two networks over the

same wires: the NSFNET, a free service for all of the research users that had no

performance or service requirements and which prohibited commercial access, and the

ANSNET, a private network that allowed commercial access but required paying fees to

ANS. As part of the agreement with the NSF explored above, ANS would have to invest

all of the profits gained from providing commercial network service to the ANSNET into

developing and expanding the network infrastructure. ANS hoped that a huge influx of

corporate clients would raise enough money to support the expansion of the network and

thus subsidize the research community. But as we will see, ANS was unsuccessful in

attracting corporate users and most of the costs of the enhanced network fell either

directly or indirectly on the research users themselves.

Second, ANS planned to charge mid-level networks for the backbone services that

they had previously gotten for free. ANS had a few ways to motivate regional research

networks to switch from the free NSFNET to the costly ANSNET: by selling them better

service, offering better customer support, and by only allowing ANSNET users to send

commercial information over the backbone. Many regional networks sold intra-network

service to commercial users in order to raise revenues and help subsidize the research

users. The commercial users were forbidden from accessing the other regional networks

28



through the NSFNET, however, because of the AUP. They would only be able send data

over the backbone if the regional network they were attached to subscribed to the

ANSNET and compensated ANS accordingly. But if a network did connect to the

ANSNET it would have to pass the extra costs onto its users, which were mainly

researchers whose usages were already subsidized by the NSF, and commercial users for

whom it might turn out to be cheaper to connect to the ANSNET directly.

Third, ANS planned to convince users who were then connected to mid-level

networks to instead connect directly to the ANSNET. This would also hurt the

researchers, however, because the commercial users were an important source of revenue

for the regional networks and were partly subsidizing the research community network

usage as it was.

Thus the subcontracting of the backbone management to ANS could only have

advanced the NSF’s goals if ANS had been able to attract enough new, paying

commercial customers to subsidize the research users through economies of scale. But in

1990 when the NSF agreed to MERIT’s plans, it had not investigated whether or not such

customers existed. It is not even clear that the NSF believed that such potential customers

existed; rather, it seems that the situation was simply not fully considered. Given the lack

of new commercial customers, ANS was really offering the NSF what Gordon Cook

called a “zero sum solution,” in which the NSF would continue to pay for network

services for the research community but would lose control over the network itself.

Still, ANS might have been successful in both advancing the network and serving

the research community if only it had been able to attract a substantial number of new

commercial users. It is not clear exactly why it had so little success in doing so. But an

29



incidentally, it never alerted Dialog to the fact that it would only be able to access and be

accessed by a small fraction of the Internet. Dialog had published in its customer

newsletter that its site could be accessed at “dialog.com” and only found out that it did

not have full service once their would-be customers reported to them that they could not

access the site.46 Dialog then insisted that ANS switch its status from commercial to

research, and in exchange it would agree to—or pretend to—follow the restrictions laid in

the NSFNET AUP. To complicate this further, although mid-level networks were given

the offer to sign the Connectivity Agreement at no charge, and without a binding

obligation to sign a Gateway Agreement as well, many of them may not have realized

that this was possible and may have resisted signing the first agreement for fear that it

would be accompanied by financial obligation. As was, it would have been relatively

painless for each mid-level to sign the Connectivity Agreement, but all communication

with ANS was so convoluted, and the distrust of ANS so pervasive, that this outcome

never materialized and ANS’s commercial Internet never fully developed to ANS’s

expectations.

CIX

Meanwhile, while ANS was alienating the mid-level networks with its opaque

management and complicated pricing schemes, a truly commercial and non-governmental

Internet emerged to rival the ANS-run network. Although ANS had only limited success

attracting commercial users, a competitive market for nationwide computer networking

services was beginning to emerge alongside the ANSNET. In most cases these competing

networks bought out the infrastructure of regional networks and then sold them Internet

46 Ibid.

31



service, while also selling intra-network, value-add service to commercial customers.

PSINet provides a model for how many of the commercial network service

providers came about. William L. Schrader, who had created the regional network

NYSERNet in 1986, saw the potential for a market for network services and tried to find

a way to profit from it. But since NYSERNet owned the network infrastructure, and the

NSF subsidized NYSERNet, he could not sell commercial service through NYSERNet

directly.47 In 1989, Schrader founded a for-profit company called Performance Systems

International (PSINet), which bought NYSERNet’s network infrastructure and began

selling network service to both NYSERNet and other commercial customers. PSINet was

a commercial success and several other networks performed similar maneuvers and

began selling commercial services as well.

Commercial users of different service providers had no way to interconnect,

however, since the respective commercial networks were only connected through the

NSFNET, which the commercial users were forbidden from accessing. The NSFNET’s

Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) stated that the NSFNET backbone must be used for the

advancement of research and education, and (with the exception of ANSNET users as

explained above) only traffic related to research and education could be sent through the

NSFNET backbone.48 Commercial traffic related to research and education fell into a

gray area, however, and it was not always clear what was and was not allowed. Gordon

Cook provides two examples of convoluted cases:

For example, the manufacturer of a new workstation may send a new productannouncement to a mailing list discussing engineering advancements inworkstations (informing) but not to individuals (selling). To cite another example,the publisher of a major legal database, makes its wares available via the network

47 Abbate, 19848 Abbate, 198

32



free of charge to law students while law firms may not use the network to retrievematerial even for a fee.49

The NSF had no way to tell if a given packet that traversed the backbone was commercial

or non-commercial in nature, though, and the AUP was mainly kept in tact by an honor

system. Still, commercial users were reluctant to violate the rule, and may have risked

getting into trouble depending on what traffic they sent and to whom. So commercial

users of different commercial network service providers were effectively stranded on

different islands of the Internet and were unable to freely exchange traffic.

Several commercial network service providers sought to create an AUP-free

interconnection in order to overcome this limitation. In July of 1991, three of the new

network service providers, PSINet, CERFNet, and Alternet, came together to establish a

nonprofit organization called the Commercial Internet Exchance (CIX).50 The CIX

established a gateway at which all member networks were able to interconnect. Although

membership fees supported the physical infrastructure, the networks agreed to accept all

traffic from the competing networks free of charge. For a start-up fee of $5,000, an

annual fee of $10,000, and the price of running wires to the CIX router in Santa Clara,

CA, a network could provide its users with unlimited access to all other CIX users, and

likewise open up all of its users to receive traffic from all other CIX users. Partly because

of how easy the CIX made it for networks to interconnect, and partly because of the

value-add services offered by its member networks, the CIX quickly gained popularity

and success. Many more networks joined in the following year and there were twelve

members by the summer of 1993.51

49 Cook, Whom Shall it Serve?50 Abbate, 19851 Strangelove, “Commercial Opportunities in the Networking Age.”

33



Conflict and Resolution: The Triumph of the CIX

"I think [ANS is] a woefully mismanaged company which doesn't know what it wants to be when it grows up. They had all the opportunities to walk away with the Internet accessmarket and they blew them to companies such as PSI or Alternet, which didn't have 10%of their capitalization."52

-A senior network official at ANS, reflecting on ANS’ surprising loss tothe underdog CIX.

By the end of 1991, ANS and the CIX member-networks were selling competing

versions of AUP-free access to different parts of the Internet. ANS could provide

commercial users access to all of the regional networks that had signed Connectivity

Agreements, often for large and hard to calculate fees, while members of the CIX could

provide commercial users with access to all of the CIX member networks, but not to

regional networks that were not CIX members. The division of the Internet into these two

rival camps was complicated by the unique position awarded to ANS by its arrangement

with the NSF.

Although ANS was unable to convince all of the regional networks to sign

Connectivity Agreements, and so never fully capitalized on its unique position, the CIX

insisted that the NSF was giving ANS an unfair advantage over the CIX. First, ANS

received $10 million a year from the NSF to subsidize the development of the network,

while the CIX received no such federal subsidies. In a market that offered such

economies of scale, a subsidy gave ANS a distinct pricing advantage, in that ANS could

still profit while charging its users less than the CIX member networks could. Second, by

52 Cook Report on Internet, “Hybrid Networks in the Context of NII Design”

34



virtue of running the NSFNET, ANS already possessed a nationwide backbone network

that connected to all of the regional mid-level networks. Furthermore, by virtue of its

agreement with the NSF, it had the sole right to sell access to that backbone network to

commercial users. In contrast, the CIX could not sell commercial access to the backbone

and thus its commercial customers could not reach the large majority of regional

networks that were not CIX members.

The CIX member networks’ continued criticism led to a congressional hearing on

March 12th, 1992 regarding the management of the NSFNET. There were seven witnesses

at the hearing, including Mitchell Kapor, Chairman of the CIX (and of the EFF), and

William L. Schrader, President and CEO of PSINet, as well as representatives from

MERIT, the NSF, and the academic network associations Educom and FARNet. Many

criticisms were leveled at the NSF management, especially at the secretive and poorly

documented dealings between the NSF and ANS concerning commercialization, which

many claimed had resulted in a de facto monopoly and the impairment of the commercial

networking industry. Mitch Kapor insisted that the commercial market could already

provide sufficient networking capability to the research community, and that the current

agreement with ANS was retarding the natural development of the commercial network

services market. He suggested that the NSF shift its subsidies from the network providers

(in this case ANS) to the intended users and let all service providers compete equally for

clients.53 He also suggested that the AUP be broadened to allow commercial access to all

federally supported and subsidized regional networks as another way of leveling the

playing field.54 William Schrader of PSINet was less polite and criticized the NSF for

53 Management of the NSFNET, Mitch Kapor official statement, page 13.54 Management of the NSFNET, 110.

35



giving ANS a “monopoly position” akin to “giving a federal park to K-mart.”55

Although Congressman Boucher, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Science, was

initially skeptical that the subsidization of ANS along with the AUP gave ANS an unfair

advantage, he became convinced over the course of the hearing and took it upon himself

to right the NSF’s inadvertent wrong. He proceeded to commission a report from the

Office of Inspector General to review the NSF’s dealings with ANS, and also passed

legislation expanding the NSFNET AUP to allow some commercial access. The actual

language of the new AUP was still problematic, however, and it was not entirely clear

when or whether commercial traffic not directly related to research was permissible on

the backbone. The amended AUP stated that the NSF’s networks “may be used

substantially for purposes in addition to research and education in the sciences and

engineering, if the additional uses will tend to increase the overall capabilities of the

networks to support such research and education activities.”56 Since many thought that

nearly all usage increased the value of the networks for researchers given the natural

economies of scale of computer networking, there was no consensus on whether or not

this amounted to a de facto removal of the AUP.57

In June of 1992, following the hearing but before the AUP was amended, ANS

agreed to provisionally interconnect with the CIX for a one-year trial period. It had

resisted until then because it thought that the CIX pricing scheme of unlimited traffic

exchange would not adequately compensate ANS for the extra traffic it would carry, and

also that interconnecting would threaten ANS’ leverage over aspiring commercial

55 "The privatization of the Internet's backbone network," 4.56 Office of Inspector General, 37-38.57 Perlman says that the AUP still impeded commercial traffic, while Kahin says thatBoucher’s amendment allowed unrestricted usage.

36



customers. But ANS still believed that some sort of settlement process would eventually

be agreed upon that would compensate ANS for the commercial traffic it carried, and

planned to spend the trial year negotiating for a fairer long-term arrangement.

Although it is not entirely clear why ANS agreed to this temporary

interconnection, ANS’ compromise is indicative of the changing power relations between

ANS and the CIX. While ANS’ unresponsive management and complicated pricing

schemes had been turning off potential customers, the openness and simplicity of the CIX

had attracted many new users. The NSFNET backbone was losing its status as the “the

core” of the Internet, and it became more essential—at least for commercial users—to

have access to the CIX.58 Thus it is likely that ANS needed to offer its member networks

access to the CIX in order to stay competitive.

But while many network users thought that this interconnection would open the

network to all traffic in all directions, the result was not that simple.59 Although ANS

interconnected with the CIX, it did not become a member of the CIX, and therefore ANS’

commercial customers were not allowed to pass data through the CIX router. ANS only

agreed to transmit the data to the router, and had no control over what traffic was allowed

through it. A network that was connected to ANS would also have to be a member of the

CIX in order to pass data through the CIX router. Although this was not enforced

immediately following the interconnection, by September 1993 many people told the CIX

that they would not pay member dues as long as ANS users were getting similar access

for free through this loophole.60 In October 1992 the CIX installed a gateway router

58 Cook Report on Internet, “Advanced Network and Services (ANS) Joins CommercialInternet Exchange,” 12.59 Cook, “NSFNET ‘Privatization’ and the Public Interest,” Part 3.60 Cook Report on Internet, “Advanced Network and Services (ANS) Joins CommercialInternet Exchange,” 9.

37



between the CIX router and the ANS attachment to the CIX in order to block ANS users

that were not paying members.61 According to ANS, this was discovered by other CIX

members as well as by ANS only after the filter was installed.62 A representative of

PSINet, one of the CIX member networks, responded that ANS was distorting the facts

and that most CIX members were well aware of the filtering and were uniformly in favor

of it.63 Although it is not always possible to know exactly who knew what when, it is well

established that there were many users who suddenly lost access to familiar sites without

understanding why.64

Although the provisional interconnection had left ANS and the CIX at a virtual

stalemate, the installation of the filter gave the CIX a decisive advantage over ANS.

Although members of the CIX that were not also connected to the ANS backbone lost

some of their connectivity as well, commercial users on the networks connected to ANS

that were not also CIX members were hurt by the filter the most. Three weeks later, on

November 19, 1993, presumably to appease its commercial customers who had lost CIX

access, ANS announced that it was joining the CIX under the same terms given to all of

the member networks.65 At this point, given ANS’s infrastructure pool commercial

surcharge, it was almost always cheaper for a regional network to pay for a direct

connection to the CIX router than to pay ANS to transmit its commercial data to the CIX

router.66 It now made sense for all regional networks to join the CIX rather than pay ANS

61 Email from Martin L. Schoffstall of PSINet to Ittai Hershman of ANS, available athttp://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/199311/msg00090.html(accessed December 16th, 2008).62 Ibid.63 Ibid.64 Cook Report on Internet, “Advanced Network and Services (ANS) Joins CommercialInternet Exchange,” 9.65 Ibid.66 Ibid, 11.

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http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/199311/msg00090.html




the infrastructure pool commercial surcharge. And so ANS lost its ability to charge extra

for commercial traffic, and the complicated ANS pricing schemes disappeared, as did the

relevance of the AUP. The unlimited, un-metered, unrestricted traffic exchange that we

have now become familiar with had won. But although the CIX had become the core of

the Internet for commercial users, researchers still predominantly used the NSFNET,

which they had free access to courtesy of the NSF.

Meanwhile: The NSF Makes Plans to Privatize the NSFNET Entirely

The National Science Foundation was not heavily involved in the dispute between

ANS and the CIX. ANS had effectively taken over management of the backbone from the

NSF and pushed its own vision while the NSF sat on the sidelines for the whole ordeal.

The NSF was simply too busy to actively oversee ANS. As Milo Medin, Deputy Project

Manager of the NASA Science Internet Office, wrote, “The Foundation’s track record in

terms of technical management of the existing awardee is less than stellar. This is not

because the Foundation’s personnel are incompetent or unwilling to perform supervision;

it is because the existing staff is hopelessly overburdened with other work, and simply

does not have the time or resources to perform adequate supervision.”67 Instead of

supervising ANS, the NSF made long term plans to extricate itself from the Internet

backbone market entirely, in the hope that doing so would make the controversy moot

once and for all. But as we will see, the permanently overworked NSF ignored most of

the concerns that people raised about its plan, and proceeded to implement it in a flawed

and shortsighted manner,

67 “Fool us Once,” 127.

39



Back in 1991, after the NSF’s original plan to give ANS full responsibility for the

backbone met such great opposition, the NSF began to consider less controversial ways

to privative the backbone. Having decided that it should transition the Internet to the

hands of a few competing private companies (as explored above in ‘Privatization: Yes,

But How?’), the NSF began formalizing its plan, which it referred to as the “Project

Development Plan.” In June of 1992, right as ANS was provisionally connecting to the

CIX, the NSF released a draft solicitation concept for public comment, which effectively

proposed a new design for the future of the Internet. The proposed plan included two

separate solicitations: the first for a Network Access Point (NAP) manager and Routing

Authority (RA), and the second for the construction and management of a new, very

high-speed backbone (vBNS). Each NAP would be an Internet exchange (like the CIX)

at which any appropriate network could interconnect, and the vBNS would connect to all

of the NAPs. Under the proposal, each NAP would be an “AUP-free” zone, while the

vBNS would ban commercial traffic entirely.

The basic idea behind the plan was that the private sector would entirely take over

the provision of low and medium bandwidth Internet service, while the NSF would

concentrate on developing the next level of high bandwidth services for computation-

intensive research (by building the vBNS). The NAPs would then allow the regional

networks, the commercial networks, the government networks and the vBNS to all

interconnect. To avoid repeating the ANS controversy, the winner of the vBNS contract

would be prohibited from selling commercial access to the vBNS; since the NAPs would

allow all networks to interconnect, the vBNS would only be a redundant connection and

could thus be used purely for research without facing any pressure to allow commercial

40



users.

In response to the plan, the NSF received more than 240 pages of comments from

researchers, network service providers, government agencies and advocacy groups, most

of which was highly critical. There were two main areas of concern: the effectiveness of

the NAPs and the lack of consideration given to the broader significance of the project.

Regarding the NAPs, many engineers thought that the NAPs would not be able to

adequately handle increased future traffic.68 Milo Medin of NASA insisted that the NSF

institute more forceful requirements for continued performance, and recommended that

the solicitation “be rewritten to explicitly deal with the critical operational issues and

performance requirements associated with management of the NAPs and route servers. It

would be sheer negligence to not call out this critical issue in the specification.” 69

Some existing network service providers, on the other hand, felt that the

commercial Internet was already capable of serving both the research and business

communities adequately, and that the NSF’s proposal would only get in the way. There

already existed network access points at which many networks interconnected, such as

the CIX and MAE east, which had arisen naturally in the free market. The NSPs thought

that the official NAPs would end up costing more and being less efficient. As Rick

Adams of UUNet wrote, “I see no reason for MAE east participants to ‘transition’ to an

NSF funded NAP in DC. The only difference is that the NSF funded NAPs cost more

money to participants. Gee thanks Steve… Great idea to PAY someone to deliver a

service more expensive than already provided commercially.”70 Rick went on to insist

68 Ibid, 138.69 Ibid, 138.70 Rick Adams on the com-priv mailing list, available at http://www.interesting- people.org/archives/interesting-people/199403/msg00015.html (accessed November 24,2008). This email is from 1994 and was therefore not in direct response to the draft

41








that the free market would naturally provide an effective collection of interconnection

points that would serve the network’s needs: “If NSF would get the hell out of the way

and stop confusing things with bad ideas like NAPs, you would see a nice stable set of

interconnection points materialize WITHOUT government money or meddling.”71

Regarding the bigger picture, many people felt that the NSF was focusing too

extensively on creating a technical design for a network that would serve the research and

business communities in the short run, while neglecting to ensure that the network would

serve the public in the long run. Since its founding in 1990, the Electronic Frontier

Foundation had become very active in the Internet community and had advocated for its

vision of a National Public Network at many policy meetings and industry workshops.

Although the EFF was not alone in wanting an all-purpose network, the foundation was

instrumental in bringing the broader significance of the network to the awareness of the

parties involved in the privatization process. In response to the draft solicitation, it

commented that “despite the NSF’s stated intentions, the NSFNET has set de facto

national public policy for an important part of the U.S. communications infrastructure

and will likely continue to do so.”72 As explored above (see “An Alternative Vision: The

National Public Network”), the EFF insisted that the NSF take steps to ensure that all

network service providers be granted a level playing field. Kapor suggested that the NSF

either give the FCC regulatory power of the network, or that it use its temporary leverage

to press the backbone providers to sign binding agreements to interconnect. 73 Given the

lack of consideration given to this issue, the EFF commented: “Critical governance issues

solicitation. However, there were similar—though less colorful—comments at the time.“Steve” refers to Steve Wolff of the NSF.71 Ibid.72 “Fool us Once,” 13873 Kapor, “The Privatized NREN.”

42



seem as yet unspecified, including interconnection policies that would ensure a level

playing field for all network service providers. In the absence of such policy, it remains

unclear how the NSF will proceed to ensure an equitable and fair environment for all

service providers and users.”74

Although the NSF made a few changes from the draft solicitation, it did not

address the main issues discussed above. The NSF released the revised solicitation on

May 6, 1993, a few months before ANS joined the CIX, and announced the contract

awards in 1994. By the time the NSFNET was decommissioned in April 1995, the

Internet landscape had already changed dramatically: the CIX had risen (as explored

above) and fallen (as explored below), and a few large ISPs had come to dominate the

backbone industry. As we will see, the NSF’s plan ended up helping those large ISPs

further consolidate their power.

The Fall of the CIX and the Rise of the Large Backbone Providers

Although the CIX may have earned its place in history as “the heroic institution”

that enabled small ISPs to band together to defeat the leviathan ANS, it fell apart soon

afterwards as the rapidly expanding ISPs outgrew their use for it.75 After instituting the

routing filters on ANS users in late 1993, CIX membership jumped from 20 ISPs to 70

ISPs in only ten months.76 Yet there were still users that had CIX access who were not

technically supposed to. When a small network joined CIX member networks, it was

74 “Fool us Once,” 13975 “What is the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX)?” available athttp://cgi.amazing.com/internet/faq-8.0.html (accessed December, 16, 2008).76 Srinagesh, 143.

43

http://cgi.amazing.com/internet/faq-8.0.html





pay the same member fees that larger networks paid. The only networks that still believed

in the CIX’s basic principles were the medium sized ones, and they were losing influence

quickly in the evolving marketplace.

Although in theory it may have been possible for the CIX to adapt to the changing

market circumstances and institute a tiered membership system, it was never able to do

so. This was in part because some of the older members of the CIX were, for whatever

reason, ideologically committed to the idea of equality among networks, and were

reluctant to accept the growing dominance of a few larger providers. As Cook explains,

The attitude of the two key board members who had been locked in the earlier struggle essentially stayed focused in a siege mentality that saw their views of theInternet as the only correct ones and showed no interest in consensus building.The Board was as a result seldom united, and, driven by…arrogance of almostreligious intensity…was unable to focus on the long term picture of thedevelopment of the industry, and unable to communicate satisfactorily with itsmembers.79

As a result, the CIX model of multilateral peering agreements, in which all networks

shared all data without settlements, gave way to bilateral peering agreements that allowed

for customizable arrangements depending on the relative sizes of the ISPs involved. New

Internet Exchanges also emerged that allowed more flexible peering arrangements among

networks, such as the rapidly expanding MAE-East in New York and the NSF-sponsored

NAPs, while the large backbone providers generally opted to set up private, bilateral

peering arrangements with other backbone providers of comparable size.

And so, in a manner eerily similar to the fall of ANS, the CIX lost its competitive

advantage to the large backbone providers. Although the CIX router had been the core of

the commercial Internet for almost a year, by the end of 1994 the handful of large

backbone providers who freely peered with each other became the new center of the

79 Cook Report, “CIX's Recent Troubles Documented By Former Executive Director.”

45



commercial Internet. Once the NSFNET was deactivated in April 1995, and researchers

began buying Internet service just like everybody else, the large backbone providers

became the center of the entire, reunified Internet. They remain so to this day. And so,

after four years of chaos and confusion, the Internet completed its phase change and

finally reached a new stasis.

Evaluating the NSF’s Plan for Privatization: A Lost Opportunity

Presumably the NSF believed that the NAPs would provide an adequate structure

for universal interconnection. But without adequate performance requirements at the

NAPs, they became congested as predicted. As a result, Network Service Providers

(NSPs) that only offered Internet service that traversed a NAP were at a competitive

disadvantage relative to the larger backbone providers who could offer much more

efficient service. Since there was no mandatory interconnection policy, the large

backbone providers only agreed to peer with other backbone providers of comparable

size, and were able to charge high fees to small NSPs that wanted to connect with them.

The situation was worsened by the fact that in most cases the large backbone providers

controlled the NAPs as well, and were free to set NAP pricing structure and performance

levels to further slant the playing field in their favor.80 As a result, in 2001 only five

companies controlled 80% of the Internet’s backbone—MCI WorldCom, Genuity,

AT&T, Sprint, and Cable & Wireless—and the thousands of other ISPs depended on

buying service from these companies.81 Without a mandatory interconnection policy,

80 For more analysis on how the NAPs were used anti-competitively, see “Fool Us Once” pages 144-151.81 “Fool us Once,” 144.

46



smaller companies were at the whims of the larger backbone providers, and were forced

to accept whatever fees were asked of them or else risk losing Internet connection all

together.

The NSF’s plan also failed to address many more general societal concerns that

are still relevant today, such as security.82 According to the Center for Strategic and

International Studies, “nearly every day our nation is discovering new threats and attacks

against our country’s networks.”83 Foreign opponents have “been able to penetrate poorly

protected U.S. computer networks” and have gained access to “military technology,

intellectual property of leading companies, and government data.”

84

The weaknesses in

cyber security stem from the Internet Protocols themselves, and although more secure

protocols have been developed, the commercial backbone providers have not had any

incentive to adopt them. The NSF had acknowledged the importance of network security

in 1991 when Charles Brownstein, assistant director of the NSF’s Computer and

Information Science and Engineering Directorate, stated that security “is a big concern

and growing bigger every day.” The NSF could have done a number of things to address

the problem, such as redesigning the Internet’s security mechanisms just as the military

had done with its network in 1983 (see: ‘Background: ARPANET and the Transition to

TCP/IP’ above).85 Instead, the NSF ignored the issue entirely.

As Shah and Kesan write, “The significant point is that government could have

done something, not necessarily that the government should have. However, there was

little public debate concerning what the government could have done. The lack of

82 Ibid, 159-16283 CSIS, “Securing Cyberspace,” Preface.84 Ibid, 11.85 “Fool us Once”, 161

47



there was a high barrier to entry in the backbone market, there was a low barrier to entry

in the provision of dial-up access.89 Although it is not clear if the NSF was aware of this

at the time, the FCC ruled in 1983 that Enhanced Service Providers (ESPs), in this case

dial-up NSPs, did not need to pay access charges to local phone companies.90 As a result,

NSPs were able to provide unlimited, un-metered dial-up Internet access to its customers

as long as it was located within the range of a local telephone call. A small NSP in a rural

area only needed a few hundred customers to be able to support its facilities as well as

subscribe to a high-speed backbone provider.91 The entrepreneurial opportunities offered

by the local dial-up service market helped facilitate the rapid, inexpensive, and

geographically pervasive growth of the Internet. The concentration of power in the

backbone industry was not enough to offset this growing market.

But of course the real success of the Internet was fueled by its remarkable

popularity—a popularity that was hard to foresee at the beginning of the 1990’s. During

the NSFNET years, the Internet was hard to use. As author Ed Krol wrote, "What we had

was a library where all the books were dumped on the floor and there was no card

catalogue."92 Personal computers were still expensive, relatively rare, and employed

bland and un-stimulating text-based interfaces. On top of that, the Internet itself was

disorganized, with no good way to find anything on it, and it employed only a few

elementary protocols such as email and file-transfer. But the early 1990’s saw a dramatic

rise in popular computing which began to make the Internet more relevant. The

exponentially increasing price performance of computer chips led to more affordable PCs

89 Greenstein, 160.90 Oxman, “The FCC and the Unregulation of the Internet,” 16.91 Greenstein, 160-161.92 “Books on the Floor,” available at http://info.org.il/english/books_on_the_floor.html (accessed December 16th, 2008).

49

http://info.org.il/english/books_on_the_floor.html

http://info.org.il/english/books_on_the_floor.html



that were capable of colorful graphics and more interactive operating systems. Bulletin

Board Systems (BBSs) such as America Online (AOL), CompuServe and Prodigy

became popular, and gave many consumers their first experiences of using computer

networks. Yet while the BBSs approximated the theoretical appeal of the Internet, their

popularity was based largely on proprietary content. The Internet itself still offered very

little to the average user.

But during the two years between the NSF’s solicitation in 1993 and the final

decommissioning of the NSFNET in 1995, two developments helped turn the Internet

into the popular and useful medium that it is today: the graphical web browser and the

search engine. Although Tim Berners-Lee had invented the World Wide Web (WWW)

protocols in 1990, they were not of much use to the general public until the release of the

sophisticated graphical web browser Netscape Navigator in 1994. Yet even with the

WWW, it was still hard for a curious web-crawler to find anything on the Internet. But

the creation of the Yahoo search engine in 1994 provided a systematic way for users to

find content on the web. Suddenly the web exploded and brought the Internet with it. The

BBSs all connected to the Internet and were gradually reduced from being unique content

providers to just being value-add Internet Service Providers. This shift from proprietary

content providers to the Internet frontier was ultimately a reflection of one basic fact:

people felt empowered by the Internet and they liked it. As Christopher Anderson wrote

in 1995:

That is why the Internet has exploded past commercial on-line services such asCompuServe and America Online (although they, too, are [growing] quickly, in part because they offer Internet access). Many of its users are not just informationconsumers, they are producers as well. For them, the Internet serves as personal printing press, radio station…in one. No commercial service can ever hope torival the quantity and quality of the output of 20m people. True, much of what

50



they produce is rubbish; but much is astoundingly creative, sometimes evenuseful.93

Although the NSF ignored most of the EFF’s suggestions during the privatization

process, the Internet still developed into something approximating the EFF’s original

vision of a new world that empowered individuals.

Conclusion

And so the triumph of the commercial Internet, the privatization of the NSFNET,

and the new unified network’s unprecedented popularity all represented a new paradigm

for the Internet. The Internet had completed its long, complex phase change from its

original state as a government-run network restricted to researchers to its new state as a

privately run network open to anyone. Now once again everybody agreed on what the

Internet was and what it meant. Press coverage of the Internet’s successes snowballed,

with stories of mythic programmers, entrepreneurs, and innovators, as well as with all

sorts of tributes to the Internet’s revolutionary impact on all areas of life. The Internet

was seen as the great universal phenomenon that nobody saw coming and that nobody

could control. Excited scholars began studying the Internet’s early history to learn where

this miraculous network came from, and most focused on the ARPANET and the

development of the TCP/IP Internet Protocol Suite as the mythic origins of the new

phenomenon. The underlying assumption seems to have been that the modern Internet

emerged naturally from the technology itself, and that it was only a matter time between

the creation of the Internet Protocols and the development of a universal network based

93 “Accidental Superhighway,” 3.

51



on un-metered, unrestricted traffic exchange.

This view that the Internet’s history was somehow teleological explains the two

distinct historical epochs in Internet historiography: first the Internet was created, and

second, the Internet eventually reached its destiny. The transition period—or the phase-

change—was thus only seen as noise; the complex politics and dynamics of the period

were considered to be entirely subservient to the larger, inevitable trend towards the

Internet’s ultimate fruition. For several years following the privatization, the Internet was

simply too novel and exciting for scholars to find it worth considering more nuanced

questions about the Internet’s past; the Internet was so universally useful and appealing

that it seemed obvious that the Internet should develop into what it did.

But at the turn of the century, the frenzy of Internet idealization finally began to

wear off. The advantage that small ISPs had received from telephony interconnection

laws vanished as dial-up service became obsolete; high-profile Internet security threats

became commonplace, and perhaps most importantly, the dot-com bubble burst and the

NASDAQ crashed. Suddenly the Internet stopped seeming so perfect. Only then did

scholars like Kesan and Shah begin to examine the Internet’s lingering problems more

closely, and to consider why only five backbone providers controlled 80% of the Internet,

and why the Internet’s infrastructure was fundamentally insecure. Both problems could

be traced back to the events of this period, to the rise and fall of the CIX and to the NSF’s

shortsighted plan for privatization, and both would be much more difficult to solve after

the fact.

It is hard to change the Internet now, or even to influence it—in a way it has

become so big, and vast, and the backbone market so entrenched, that it is nearly

52



impossible to exert systematic control over the basic infrastructure. But this was not

always the case. During this phase change, the Internet was still malleable—the privately

run ISPs were still fighting ANS for influence, the interconnection agreements were still

being negotiated, and most importantly, the NSF had the opportunity—perhaps the last

opportunity—to consciously design the Internet to better ensure basic values like

competition and security. The NSF did not make use of that small window, however, and

by 1995 the Internet had hardened into its modern form. The Internet today still suffers

from that lost opportunity. In many ways, the privatization of the Internet was a

constitutional moment. And like other constitutions, it is both harder to change once it is

written, and most significant for what it did not say.

53



GLOSSARY

Advanced Network Services (ANS). The nonprofit corporation formed by MERIT,IBM, and MCI in 1990 to operate and manage the NSFNET.

ANSNET. A private network run by ANS over the same wires as the NSFNET, to whichANS sold commercial access.

Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). The elite research agency that built theInternet’s precursor, the ARPANET.

Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). The policy that prohibited commercial users fromaccessing the NSFNET.

Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX). The nonprofit organization that allowed the

free exchange of data among its member networks. Its model of unlimited and un-metered traffic exchange between networks became the standard for the Internet.

Computer-Science Network (CSNET). The National Science Foundation’s firstcomputer network, built in 1981 to connect computer science departments all over thecountry.

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The organization that was founded to protectthe virtual worlds of computer networks from governmental intrusion and regulation, andwhich provided the dominant voice for the creation of an all-purpose network designedfor universal accessibility.

Mitch Kapor. The cofounder of the EFF and the Chairman of the CIX, who was one of the primary advocates of the idea that the Internet should be a network for the public, not just for researchers.

Michigan Educational Research Information Triad (MERIT). The organization thatwon the five-year cooperative agreement in 1987 to manage and operate the NSFNET.MERIT, along with IBM and MCI, spun off the non-profit corporation ANS to which itsubcontracted the operation of the network.

Network Access Point (NAP). The government-sponsored Internet exchanges at whichregional networks could interconnect, which were implemented by the NSF as part of the privatization of the Internet, and which were later criticized for becoming criticallycongested.

National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET). The general-purpose researchnetwork built by the National Science Foundation to connect regional networks all over the country.

54



TCP/IP Internet Protocol Suite. The set of protocols used for the Internet, which wereoriginally developed by ARPA to allow for the interconnection of disparate networks bymaking the host computers responsible for reliable communication and thus reducing therole of the network itself to the bare minimum.

Very High Speed Backbone (vBNS). The network designed to provide high-bandwidthservice to data-intensive researchers as part of the NSF’s plan for privatization.

55



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http://www.darpa.mil/Docs/Internet_Development_200807180909255.pdf

between water and ice: the formative transition from the nsfnet to the modern internet

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