[email protected] (Stephen Y Odo) writes: > and that's the rub. why the requirement that it be used ONLY for research? > > none of the other vendors have such restrictions. > > that's one of the biggest reasons we're moving off of the mainframe ...
telcos faced something similar with dark fiber and NSFNET backone in the 80s ... (tcp/ip is technology basis for modern internet, NSFNET backbone was operational basis for modern internet, and CIX was business basis for modern internet). telcos have large fixed costs & expenses ... but recover costs based on useage. all the fiber going into the ground enormously increased capacity ... however w/o signicant reduction in use charges ... people weren't going to use the extra capacity. however, any upfront reduction in the use charges .... w/o the bandwidth hungry applications ... would result in telcos operating at significant loss for possibly decade (period it would take for the new bandwidth hungry applications to evolve in an environment with drastically reduced fees). the telcos leveraged NSFNET backbone as a commercial-free technology incubator. The NSFNET backbone RFP was awarded for $11.2M ... and was for non-commercial use only. Folklore is that resources put into NSFNET backbone was closer to four times the RFP. The non-commercial use of the NSFNET backbone would limit impact on telco revenue ... but at the same time telcos could provide large amount of extra resources for non-profit educational technology incubator to promote evolution of the bandwidth hungry applications. misc. old email about NSFNET backbone http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet we had been working with NSF and various institutions leading up to NSFNET backbone effort ... but then weren't allowed to bid on the RFP. The director of NSF attempted to help by writing letter to corporation asking for our help (there were also comments like what we already had running was at least five years ahead of all the NSFNET backbone RFP responses to build something new). Turns out that just aggrevated the internal politics. -- 42yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
