You need to study some more (European) Internet history. Among
other things, you seem to overlook that the EUnet you know today, as
well as our infrastructure (in many ways similar to Ebone's), was a
result of political manouvering leading to us being kicked out of
Ebone at the time (6-7 years ago). Then the really interesting hard
work started, building from the ground while Ebone had its US half
circuits paid by the NSF, and Rick Adams lent us a big helping hand
during those years. (There is still much confusion caused by the
similar names of the two companies, but that's a different story.)
Per - I don't know where you got that story but its not at all true
that Eunet got kicked out of EBONE. My recollection (and I was present
at the meeting) is that Glenn Kowack withdrew from EBONE at the same
time as Dante and Pipex. EBONE would have been very glad at the time
to have retained EUnet as a member of the consortium. It's also not
true that NSF paid for EBONE 1/2 circuits - there was a small NSF
contribution (very small part of the total monthly bill) for the port
charge on the ICM routers and that was it, EBONE paid for the rest of
the full circuits and in fact this is still the case today.
As you are probably aware, we have been on very friendly terms with
Ebone for several years now.
True - and lets keep it that way please.
Cheers,
Dave