At 23:20 9/22/95, Guy T Almes wrote:

Mike, Nice paper, but I think you're seriously off on the recompete of the NIC. It was more like 1992 rather than '88 as you write. Given the way the Internet changes character each year, that was quite a difference. Note one parallel with the current DNS fee debate: during the period (roughly) 1987 to 1993, the NSFnet EDU community depended on a NIC that was accountable to the DoD. There were examples of friction that resulted, but things were mostly quite amacable. Now the private-sector COM/ORG community is having to put up with vestigial accountability structure oriented around the NSF. There will be some friction, and there will be some patience, and there will be progress. -- Guy

You're correct mostly - my dates are off on that one issue - I should have reread the paragraph. Unfortunately, none of these events are point events. The beginnings of the recompetition started in 1988 before I left DDN, the actual award didn't happen until around the date you mentioned. But, it was known this was going to happen and the DOD was getting increasing concerned about paying for all those non-DOD registrations. This resulted in a number of discussions with NSF which eventually resulted in the Internic solicitation. The seeds were planted in 1988, but took quite a while to grow. As I recall (possibly faultily), the DDN NIC recompetition completed and resulted in contract award sometime before the Internic contract was awarded - this happened after I left DDN. I think the actual award of the replacement DDN NIC contract was 91 - my language is misleading. By Sept 1989 (when I left DDN), the SRI contract had been placed on year by year extension pending getting a whole lot of issues in line.