Re: Re[2]: [ga] Status of the Review Task Force

[Jefsey Morfin <jefsey@wanadoo.fr>]

Dear Elisabeth,
You right recalling us that the internet is exactly that: an inter-nets. 
This helps a lot to understand why the ICANN is only one of the legitimate 
Internet governance centers and why it trying to be unique is a threat on 
the stability of the most distributed inter-connect system ever. 
Development, investments and governance has always been balanced. Actually 
long before the dates you quote.

You may recall that the international public data services (in France the 
NTI: noeud de transit international) operated since 1978 linking the 
International Gateways in New York and the public US networks, the European 
Space Agency in Frascatti, the private Tymehare network, GE, IBM, etc... 
The Netherlands and Belgium implemented the first public non-US 
international interconnect.

Several international interconnects started developping (France got an 
interconnect with Spain) while we were providing public interconnects with 
Euronet (and Diane) and Arpanet. We covered most of Europe and then the Far 
East and some Latin-America - Agentina, Brazil and Australia, South Africa.

The international data-network naming scheme was stabilized since 1978 
(registry, host, application, unlimited size, ISO 3166). The fist 
interconect I personally investigated but not concluded was with Louis 
Pousin and his team from INRIA (ie. the AFNIC place) in may/june 1978. His 
network was Cyclades and many in here know what TCP/IP owes to Cyclades 
more than me.

We then interconnected the near-by Bull site (Louveciennes) for their 
development of the ADDA language by Ichbia on the Multics machines on 
ARAPnet, the gateway was in Phoenix. We lead the transfer from TII protocol 
to X.75 and X.121 adressing scheme and the support of the DNICs (numeric 
country codes). That was after the ARPA team from BBN incorporated as 
Telenet and made X.25/75 voted by the CCITT (ITU/T) together with with 
INRIA and NorthernTelecom.

The interconnect public services/ARPAnet asked a very simple naming 
conversion mechanism. It was  implemented as a patch on the public node (on 
ARPA/Telenet it was probably very simple through IP 
adresses?).  International public naming scheme used the ISO 3166 Radio 
list. The two letters list was used by ARPA - if I was told correctly - to 
avoid confusion with gTLDs and because of the old use of "UK". Is someone 
in here from the early 1980s US ARPA side? At that time there were already 
tens of thousand of international public users undr that naming scheme.

The first international UN public discussion and motion analysis on the 
international data-network services using the international data-network 
naming scheme was at the IBI meeting in Torremolinos (in 1979 if my memory 
is true) under the chainig of the ... King of Spain! The first 
South-African Universities association to interconnect the US and European 
Database services and university machines was in 1979. There were several 
very active University persons in various African countries too. They had a 
meeting back in the early 1980s.

One may also recall that we established the fist international connexion as 
per the international standard with Japan (KDD in X.75) then with UK (BT). 
I am not sure, but I hardly see how the interconnect could have been 
performed without using at least in parallel the international naming 
scheme format since X.121 was still under discussion. We stabilized the 
X.75 parameters for public operations and addressing under the chairing of 
Radio Austria in Vienna - they interfaced the Eastern Bloc through Hungaria 
and Russian Univesities since 1982-1983 if I am right. Congo tested a 
puiblic link for Elisabethville in 1984. All that was work, investment, 
commitment by hundreds of people round the world.

IRT the web itself may be WXW can access http://www.w3.org/Consortium/ and 
see how it was engineered by Tim Berners-Lee at the CERN in Geneva. May be 
Elsiabeth you cann add what comes from the INRIA there?

No one will forget the huge contributions from Doug Engelbart on ARPA and 
then at Tymshare/Tymnet. At the Tymnet/Eurolab we interfaced his Augment 
system through public services in Feb 1986 and accessed the French Minitel 
service from public US accesses since 1984 with gateways in several cities.

I can testify the first time I heard the word *delegation* was in IANA 
documents. I had hard time to understand what it meant in an 
interconnect... As you say, Elisabeth, to interconnect you need to be two 
and equal.  Such a wording seems to be part of the "single authoritative 
point of failure" misunderstanding with an unique US root of the world. I 
am afraid this is not the way it was implemented and the way it works... 
ask the Irish citizens in charge of the traffic analysis in 1984/1987. And 
the Hong-Kong British Subject who was installing most of the international 
interconnects. But true the whole system was co-administered by a nice US 
person in San Jose and another one (now an Uninet manager) in Paris.

Dear WXW, International networks are just that: network of international 
systems, investments and people.

BTW, Peter, V.I. were interconnected long before the Internet name was ever 
coined. International e-commerce probably started there and in Bermuda in 
1983. With credit card payment authorisations and airline reservation on 
public accesses. Ask Jack McDonnell and Bob McCormick.

Jefsey


n 12:51 03/09/01, Elisabeth Porteneuve said:
>William X Walsh <william@userfriendly.com> wrote:
> > Sunday, Sunday, September 02, 2001, 9:00:11 PM, Peter de Blanc wrote:
> > > I concur (agree) with Elisabeth's comments here.
> > > Peter de Blanc
> >
> > Elisabeth Porteneuve wrote:
> > > The ccTLDs represent Local Internet Communities, and contrary to the
> > > gTLD Registries, ccTLD Registries do not operate under the US law and
> > > jurisdiction, but under national law and jurisdiction.
> >
> > But in fact, the ccTLD was delegated under an implied contract that is
> > subject to US Law.  So in effect, ccTLDs are, to a limited degree,
> > subject to US Law.
> >
>
>==> This is the most frequent erroneous assumption.
>
>     The Internet network was built up by researchers and engineers,
>     from the US and from several other countries.
>     To have the simplest network, you need 2 sides, and you need
>     that the both sides wish to built it up. It is the exact story
>     of the intial Internet. No "delegations" - collaborative work.
>
>     The establishment of ccTLD started in 1985. It was an era of
>     ancestors EARN-BITNET, SPAN - Space Physics Analysis Network,
>     HEPNET - High Energy Physics Network, etc ....
>     Actually if you recall the naming scheme used for EARN or for SPAN
>     - it was based on ISO 3166 code, at the time the names of "nodes"
>     were limited to 8 characters!
>
>     At this pioneers time, the network deployment followed the
>     international research and education communities needs.
>     Starting in 1987 the US National Science Foundation and its
>     management were leading in international efforts helping
>     the worldwide Internet to take shape (see the Project Solicitation
>     for International Connections for the NSFNET, NSF90-69, July 1990,
>     prepared after many discussions with Europeans, with the idea
>     to connect the NSFNET to European backbones, and share expensive
>     lines cost - I have an original paper copy in my archives,
>     I have been there).
>
>     There was no contract under US law or any other law, there was
>     collaborative work, and we were putting European taxpayers money
>     to make Internet happen.
>     In that pioneers time when the new country were connecting
>     (which means putting enormous resources on international connectivity),
>     it was using its own ISO 3166 code. The ccTLD happened this way.
>
>     Elisabeth Porteneuve
>
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