On Tue, 8 Oct 1996, Paul J. Zawada wrote:
It's a way for Universities to talk to _each_other_ at higher speeds without having to pay for the *ahem* value "added" by the Internet. Higher-Ed institutions want to talk to each other at higher speeds but don't necessarily want pay for their undergrads' (or professors' for that matter) ability to download nudie-GIFs 20x faster. So while there's no more money in the budget for faster Internet connectivity, many university provosts would be willing to spend more money for bandwidth if it were used for "nobler" pursuits. Basically, they want the Internet they had 6 years ago only faster.
Even with "recreational" use of the Internet, the Internet today is much faster then it was 6 years ago (T1 national backbone (singular)). MAE East and West traffic stats bear this out operating at around %30 capacity. The problem is ISP's who oversell backbones, Universities who overuse T1/T3 links. Given this, it would behove the Universities to form a private "intranet" and become thier own ISP. Of course, this model is an old one allready done by Suranet, etc.. who eventually went commercial for lack of funding when the next wave of technolgy arrived. In the end the benifit went to the equipment manufactures and the likes of AOL. Hopefully students will find new and fun ways to use Internet II - Then we can have Internet III?? Im very excited :) /stb --- Stephen Balbach "Driving the Internet To Work" VP, ClarkNet due to the high volume of mail I receive please quote info@clark.net the full original message in your reply.