[comp.society.futures] funding national and regional networks

kwe@bu-cs.BU.EDU (kwe@bu-it.bu.edu (Kent W. England)) (11/19/88)

	The subject is funding national and regional education and
research networks and is prompted by Barry's challenge to post
something worthwhile on the subject.

	Funding the Internet is a topic of great interest to me and
has been discussed in the past on tcp-ip and the bitnet big-lan list
in particular.  These ideas aren't necessarily new, but I hope that a
little data from the trenches will be useful.

	There are many committees and organizations echoing Gordon
Bell's call in IEEE Spectrum to build a national, government
sponsored, education and research network.  Apparently, Albert Gore
and Rep. Waldren (I forget his first name) are behind the idea in
Congress and are simply asking for reasons and costs.

	There is a group of government agencies (NSF, DOE, DARPA, NIH,
NASA, ...) that are working together to integrate their currently
independent networks.

	There are at least three main thrusts behind these and other
initiatives:
	coordinate networks and save on overall cost
	become more competitive in research and trade (compete with
the Asians)
	spread the benefits of networking to a wider audience.

	While it's interesting to talk about the propriety of
government involvement in subsidizing networking, it is a fact that
they are already in the business of doing so and are interested in
saving some of their current expenses.  Witness DARPA trying to save
money migrating ARPAnet customers to NSFnet regionals and the origin
of the DRI, Defense Research Internet.  This is all part of a trend to
make networks more production oriented and save the research money for
research.
	The other two thrusts are a result of the same thing; make
these operational networks more production oriented and less
research-oriented.  Take the technology and use it in support of
scholarly scientific and engineering research, not just computer
science research.

	The drive is to get to production networks from where we are
today to where they should be.  Most of the government agencies want
to get out of the networking business altogether and turn networking
over to "someone else".  Question is; How to do this?
	A direction, if there is one, is that NSF, DARPA and other
agencies can transition the Internet to independence or
quasi-independence over a relatively short number of years.
	This means that those institutions eligible to join the
Internet (as defined by NSF, DARPA, et al) will have to begin to pay
directly for networking service.  There may be short term subsidies,
direct or indirect, but the clear trend is to put the cost of
networking back in the budgets of the schools and the research labs
using the network.

	Institutions need to begin to think what networking is worth
to them.
	But, you say, we aren't yet networked, or we haven't yet built
the infrastructure on campus to exploit these national and regional
networks.  Good point.  That's why some people want to subsidize
networking a while longer until a "critical mass" is built and the
Internet (used loosely to mean the NSFnet and regionals and what they
evolve into) can move to cost-effective independence.

	What do these cost figures look like?  Well, on the low end
BITnet and CSnet sites pay $2k or around $5k plus line charges and on
the high end, it's subsidized for the most part and we have no true
cost/benefit analysis.  But this is rapidly changing.  High end users
face unsubsidized or partially subsidized charges of from $30k-50k
(and more) in the near term.  Is networking worth it?  What do we get
for the money?  e-mail, anonymous ftp, login, ftp in that order (IMHO).

	I can tell you if we move too quickly to unsubsidized
networking we will freeze the mean at CSnet technology and not NSFnet
technology becasue we don't yet have the critical mass.  If we move
more slowly, as there is every indication we will, then perhaps we can
build that base that will support the relatively high cost of high
speed connectivity which will allow more interesting network services
to grow.

	I believe in government subsidies to grow networking to a
critical mass.  I think the national highway system is a good model,
but I hope the "states" do a better job of maintaining the network
resource than they did with the highway resource.

	I also believe that we should have a national production
network for the exchange of scholarly and research information that
will be self-sufficient and perceived as cost effective by those who
use it and pay for it.

	I also believe we must continue research on networking and
that research networks do not fit the production model above by
definition and so should not be self-supporting (a term that is
essentially meaningless when applied to research networks).

	How will these self-sufficient networks recover their costs?
I leave that to another discussion.  It's essentially a question of
picking an appropriate cost model and an appropriate service policy.

	Kent England, Boston University