From my point of view (from my customers' point of view) the Internet in the US is failing right now. It hasn't collapsed, but some parts are almost unusable due to congestion. I think lots of people are working hard to improve that situation and I do think it will get better over time (and then it will get worse again and better and ..., just as it has in the past). I do think communication about who is doing what, could be better. I say this as a customer of an NSP (MCI) as well as an NSP manager myself (MichNet a regional network in Michigan).

So I agree with Bob a lot more than I agree with Jerry or -mo. -Jeff Ogden Merit/MichNet (the non-RA half of Merit) At 4:55 PM 4/2/96, Bob Metcalfe wrote:

Dear Jerry Whomever, (and NANOG)

Thanks for my first few clues (below) on how the Internet is actually really run.

Note, I have never predicted "the death of the Internet," only catastrophic collapse(s) during 1996, which is "a good calibration" of the rest of your objections (below).

Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, the problem is not that the Internet's chief 100 engineers, whoever they are, fail to report their problems to me, it's that they (you?) fail to report them to anybody, including to each other, which is half our problem.

Now, NANOG -- not affiliated with anybody, you say, not even the Internet Society. OK, I stand corrected. So, if not ISOC, who are IEPG and NANOG? Do IEPG and NANOG have anything to do with one another? By the way, is IETF not ISOC too? See www.isoc.org.

Settlements, "wrong on the face?" Or are you just too busy busy busy defensive to argue?

So, you say, increasing Internet diameters (hops) are only of concern to whiners like me? There are no whiners LIKE me. I am THE whiner. And hops ARE a first class problem, Jerry, or are you clueless about how store-and-forward packet switching actually really works?

Jerry, if you represent the engineers running the Internet, now I'm really worried.

Thank you for sharing, stay tuned,

/Bob Metcalfe, InfoWorld

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Received: by ccmail from lserver.infoworld.com

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From jerry@fc.net X-Envelope-From: jerry@fc.net Received: from largo.remailer.net by lserver.infoworld.com with smtp (Smail3.1.29.1 #12) id m0u4BbH-000wsjC; Tue, 2 Apr 96 11:18 PST Received: from durango.remailer.net (durango.remailer.net [204.94.187.35]) by largo.remailer.net (8.6.8/8.6.6) with SMTP id KAA23296 for <bob_metcalfe@infoworld.com>; Tue, 2 Apr 1996 10:40:40 -0800 Message-ID: <316175BF.1E79@fc.net> Date: Tue, 02 Apr 1996 10:45:19 -0800 From: jerry <jerry@fc.net> X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.01Gold (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: bob_metcalfe@infoworld.com Subject: RE: NANOG X-URL: http://www.infoworld.com/pageone/opinions/metcalfe.htm Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

You might want to note, that NANOG is not any kind of offical function of ISOC, or any other organization. Merit kindly helps provide resources to create a technical forum where issues are raised, and Network Operators learn about problems and fix them.

Just because the chief engineers of the Internet don't report their problems to you, doesn't give you an excuse to go off.

I don't think you even have a clue as to WHO, WHAT, or HOW the Internet is run. Your suggestion that traffic based settlements will do much of anything, other that create jobs for bean counters is just plan wrong of the face of it.

Oh, and about Nanog, perhaps the reason it doesn't meet more often, is because the top 100 engineers running the net are busy working, so people like you can whine about outages, "increasing diameters", etc.

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From todays NANOG List:

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Date: Mon, 1 Apr 1996 20:08:03 -0500 (EST) To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Metcalfe's clue density... Sender: owner-nanog@merit.edu Precedence: bulk

the fact that he attributes the IEPG as an ISOC organization is a good calibration on everything else.

just remember:

"Imminent death of net predicted" ::= end of discussion

soooo sorry. thanks for playing. good night.

-mo

______________________________________________ ______________________________________________

Dr. Robert M. ("Bob") Metcalfe Executive Correspondent, InfoWorld and VP Technology, International Data Group

Internet Messages: bob_metcalfe@infoworld.com Voice Messages: 617-534-1215

Conference Chairman for ACM97: The Next 50 Years of Computing San Jose Convention Center March 1-5, 1997 ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________