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Abstract : |
Network (NREN). The NREN is sometimes thought of as the ?successor ? to the NSFNET, the so-called backbone of the Internet, and is hoped by some to serve as a model for a future National Public Network. Substantial public and private resources will be invested in the NREN and other high performance networks during the next 5 to 10 years. In this paper we outline the history of the Internet and describe some of the technological and economic issues relating to it. We conclude with a discussion of some pricing models for congestion control on the Internet. 1. A Brief History of the Internet 1 In the late sixties the Advanced Research Projects Administration (ARPA), a branch of the U.S. Defense Department, developed the ARPAnet as a network linking universities and high-tech de-fense department contractors. Access to the ARPAnet was generally limited to computer scientists and other technical users. In the mid-eighties the NSF created six supercomputer centers which it wanted to make widely available to researchers. Initially, NSF relied on the ARPAnet, Bitnet and several direct university links for this purpose, but planned from the beginning to develop a network connecting the centers. The planners of this new network, the NSFNET, designed it to provide connectivity for a wide, |
