lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (08/30/83)
CSNET is paying their money because they wanted to have their relay machines actually ON the ARPANET. One of the primary reasons for this was to allow the 2 relay machines to pass messages between themselves over ARPANET. My understanding is that most such activity will eventually take place over TELENET. Since there is NSF/CSNET funding tied in with some ARPA contracts, usage of ARPANET can be justified for now -- but without such contracts, commercial carriers would have to be used exclusively. It should be noted that the term "legit gateway" is really meaningless. All pretense of gateway control has pretty much been tossed out the window -- a brief glance at the internet network list, and knowledge of the many subnets now connected to ARPA, makes it clear that gatewaying is very widespread in a variety of manners. Frankly, so long as there are no serious "political" ramifications to gatewaying (to whatever network you care to name) such gatewaying will most likely be permitted to continue. However, if there is a problem that threatens the ARPANET (or more properly these days, the Defense Data Network [DDN]) my guess is that ALL gatewaying will be stopped or seriously curtailed. I would expect this to include CSNET gatewaying -- since DoD is not going to permit such gatewaying to "random" CSNET sites to continue if the DDN is having political problems. The Bottom Line: Gatewaying will continue so long as it doesn't make waves. If you want to pay lotsa bucks, you can get a piece of paper saying that you are a gateway. If the going gets rough, however, everyone will probably get about the same treatment. This opinion is based on my around 13+ years experience with the Arpanet and the various "interesting" events which have transpired on the net over that time. --Lauren--