Geoff Huston, July 1994
Copyright (c) Geoff Huston, 1994
There are two areas of consideration here - the changing nature of the policy environment of the Internet itself, and the policy context of the development of national Internet infrastructures.
The first domain, that of the policy environment of the Internet itself is the subject of a paper (by the author) presented at INET'94,. The text of the paper can be found at http://www.aarnet.edu.au/aarnet/organisation/gih/inet-94.html
The following are very brief notes on the second policy domain, that of the policy environment of the development of national Internet infrastructures.
The general consideration is the policy model for the construction of a national Internet network service. The "traditional" model (if traditions can be considered as traditions even if they are less than five year old experiences!) is that a national Internet service starts out as a university-sponsored academic and research facility with strong governmental involvement, and little support from the national telephone communications operators. This then attracts other research players within the country, which in turn widens the brief of the facility, and places government money in a lose confederation with industry-based research funding. The third step is the increasing level of interest by other sectors, and typically the result is the genesis of other network service providers, as the constraints imposed by the publicly-funded facility typically preclude commercial activities, and often noted in conjunction with this step is the belated visible interest on the part of the telephone companies to be involved in this area of the communications business.
For many of the developing economies this model is one which tends to be overly slow and inefficient, and results in a number of dramatic upheavals at distinct intervals in time as the context changes at each step.
It is perhaps useful to learn from this experience, and structure the initial proposals for the construction of such a facility as a program of national infrastructure, and attempt to construct an environment where there is a program which from the outset admits areas of funded commercial services in response to demand as well as the initial focus on servicing the initial areas of requirement for such services. Such a program is one which is more adaptable in the various stages of growth from a small specialised operation to a communications service enterprise, and allows development of the facility to proceed at a much faster pace than one which is constrained by a set of distinct restructuring events at sequenced intervals.
Within this context government funding for the establishment of such a national Internet service is a step which must be considered carefully, as the constraints imposed by such funding often preclude smooth and efficient expansion of the service to meet an emerging national need. Creative partnerships with both the communications service providers, the academic and research sector and the supportive involvement of government as a facilitator rather than as a policy and agenda setting body would appear to match the rather pressing requirement for rapid infrastructure development in many countries.
The major objective of such facilities, as a longer term objective, is one of adding a new element to the national communications infrastructure inventory, and can be viewed as the establishment of a national asset which can lead to the enhanced productivity and efficiency of operation and international competitiveness of both the academic and research sector as well as the commercial, industrial, government and service sectors.
3. Engineering the Network - The Client Interface
4. Engineering the Network - External Peering
5. Engineering the Network - Infrastructure
7. The Operational Environment
8. The Policy Environment
GH, July 1994