NSFNET Transition Towards the Public Internet
Presented by
Peter S. Ford
Los Alamos National Laboratory
On loan to the National Science Foundation
peter@goshawk.lanl.gov
IETF
26 July 1994
Toronto, Ontario, CA
An Old Slogan
"One policy, one system, and universal service"
Theodore Vail, AT&T Annual Report, 1910
"...comprehensive, universal, interdependent, intercommunicating like
the highway system..."
How we got started...
NSF award to Merit in 1987 (partnered with IBM, MCI, ANS)
- Explicit partnership with Regionals and Supercomputing Centers
- T-1 Backbone on-line July 1988
- Spectacular growth
- T-3 BB (now up to DS-3 rates)
- Great example of public, research and commercial partnership and
tech transfer
- IETF and NSFNET grew together
- "...unloving critics and uncritical lovers"
Figure 1 (GIF - 50228 bytes)
New NSFNET "architecture"
- Competitive provisioning of service => Cost effective Internet
connectivity for R&E community
- Requires a well interconnected Internet
- NSFNET community acts as a "single customer" in that they desire
interconnectedness
Features of NSFNET recompetition
- Regional networks: nap attachment awards with sunset
- Network access points, aup-free, attachment fee
- Routing arbiter (RA)
- Pre-competitive (155 mbps) R&E backbone services
- Private network service providers
NSFNET as part of the Public Internet
Figure 2 (GIF - 14641 bytes)
New architecture
- "Commodity" and "experimental" backbone services sundered
- Sunset provision for NSF support of commodity services
- Network access points to facilitate emergence of robust private
sector internetworks
- Routing arbiter to facilitate interconnectivity
Figure 3 (GIF - 8317 bytes)
Transition is Underway
- Regionals have selected NSPs
- NAPs are coming up
- Merit is in charge of transition from the current NSFNET project:
- Elise Gerich (epg@merit.edu) is the point of contact
- Transition paper: http://rrdb.merit.edu
- Goal: most regionals to move by 31 October 1994
- NSFNET BB service ends: 30 April 95 (ANS continues as network service
provider)
- ANS network will be the foundation of the transition, NO FLASH CUTS
What does this mean
NAPs - Network Access Points
NAPs are for NSP to NSP Interconnectivity and Interoperability (NNI).
US R&E community that is covered by RNP funding will be made available
at the NAPs to all others.
Good place for working on interconnectivity and interoperability.
Located in:
- San Francisco (PacBell/Bellcore)
- Chicago (Ameritech/Bellcore)
- NYC (Sprint)
- Washington, DC (MFS)
Routing Arbiter will locate Route Servers at the NAPs.
Routing Arbiter
Awards to ISI+IBM and Merit.
Is both a technology and an operational project. (Learn by doing)
Register and disseminate Internet routing and addressing information.
Parallel/cooperative efforts by Europeans (RIPE), CANet, and Asian
Pacific (APEPG).
Development/evolution of routing system for the Internet. (provider
selection, navigation of Internet mesh, IP to ATM mapping, resource
management, multicast, routing configuration and stability, etc.)
Route servers at NAPs
Recognize distributed nature of the Internet (RA is not a "central
control" function).