Re: FYI: Someone wants to build a monopoly.

    To me the RARE OU is a closed shop of people working for a set
    of R&D networking interested parties, and they should be as
    long as they do their job.  This does not reflect a bit the
    real situation of the issues that is at hand, many international
    and regional serviceproviders (non-R&D) must be able to interwork
    in the Internet. The openness reflected in EBONE and the method
    of work in RIPE is as a model the only way forward.
    .....
    The funny (actually sad) fact is that the CEC model is just to
    blunt and inefficiant. It is almost contradictory to the goals
    they say they have - to propomte a IT-industry. You can't create
    a market by "giving a network" for three years, then hope that
    a market is created and teh the market will be selfsupporting.
    This is especially true if the "market" consits of state funded
    users only, what you get is just a higher taxpayers cost to civer
    the new costs.

Back in 1988 I participated in a working group called
"RARE Working Party A" (WPA) whose task was to come up
with a proposal for the Cosine Policy Group for a common
infrastructure - by then we were only thinking of X.25.
On one of the last sessions the chairman (from RARE)
came up with uninvited (by the working group, only on
personal initiative of the chairman) people who were
representing a new body "MDNS" (Managed Data Network
Services), supposedly an initiative of the European
PTT's, but in fact an initiative of the Dutch PTT.
It became rapidly clear that MDNS would be the only
acceptable solution, strongly backed by RARE and the
CEC representative in the working group. Under pressure
of the other participants (amongst others EARN, HEPNET
and EUnet) a second option was entered in the final
proposal: an infrastructure shared, financed and to
be managed by the participants, and built on (through
upgrading of) the existing infrastructure, to make it
highly cost-effective.
As could be predicted, the Cosine Policy Group chose
for the "RARE & CEC option". But since MDNS died a
silent death in the meantime, this was what led to
ridiculously expensive (compared to the shared links
and shared management model) IXI adventure.
The RARE OU initiative clearly shows that history is
repeating itself... and openness is still a curse to
the RARE politico's.

Added to the WPA final proposal was an Annex written
by undersigned on behalf of EUnet. The proposal for a
backbone structure in this annex bears a striking
resemblance with the Ebone as we know it today, the
only difference being the location of the UK hub. In
4 years the world hasn't changed much...


	Piet