Internet II is coming...

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

Talk about elitish bullshit...

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

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

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

--zawada

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

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

...

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

I never said that the universities, etc., weren't invaluable to the
networking community. They are, and I am the first to admit it.
Nonetheless, the assertion that commercialization is responsible for all
of the woes of the network is a one-sided mischaracterization of the
state of networking. Commercialization has brought huge resources to the
table, to the benefit of all, just as have the uni's.

Does anyone seriously assert that congestion wasn't a problem before
commercialization? Does anyone seriously assert that commercialization
has made possible huge increases in available resources? If they do, they
are wrong. I don't denigrate the benefits rendered by an active academic
participation in networking; I wish others wouldn't denigrate the
contributions of the commercial providers and the general public, either.