Please note that firewalls, Intranets, Market-segment nets (eg ANX, Inet-II, and the raft of MRNs) all are there -because- of AUPs. And yes it is a mess and it creates business opportunities and things would be much better if we could all get along and do things -my- way. :) AUPs are a fact of life. We (as a community) have to figure out how to deal with support of thousands of AUPs in a global internet.
There seems to be a confusion between private leaf networks (which nobody generally cares about) and the major backbone (as I-2 advocates portray it).
Nobody cares about AUPs in leaf networks. AUPs in transit backbones are evil. Or everybody already forgot NSFNET AUP and the tons of related hackery in routing policies all around the world?
ANX is not a transit network, ESnet is not transit, You can't buy transit from any of the commodity providers. All are (or will be) major backbones. From the ESnet community of interest, iMCI could be considered a "private leaf network". If I want to try and maintain a state of global connectivity, then I will care very much about the AUPs of my peers. The NSF AUP and the "tons of related hackery" were very small blips on the radar. AUPs are not going away, they are becoming more prevelant. Not more complex (yet), but more of them. -- --bill