RFC 1167 (rfc1167) - Page 3 of 8

Thoughts on the National Research and Education Network

RFC 1167                          NREN                         July 1990


   application level gateways are two possibilities).

   8. Provision must be made for experimental research in networking to
   support the continued technical evolution of the system.  The NREN
   can no more be a static, rigid system than the Internet has been
   since its inception.  Interconnection of experimental facilities with
   the operational NREN must be supported.

   9. The architecture must accommodate the use of commercial services,
   private and Government-sponsored networks in the NREN system.

   Apart from the considerations listed above, it is also helpful to
   consider the constituencies and stakeholders who have a role to play
   in the use of, provision of and evolution of NREN services.  Their
   interests will affect the architecture of the NREN and the course of
   its creation and evolution.

NREN CONSTITUENTS

   The Users

      Extrapolating from the present Internet, the users of the system
      will be diverse.  By legislative intent, it will include colleges
      and universities, government research organizations (e.g.,
      research laboratories of the Departments of Defense, Energy,
      Health and Human Services, National Aeronautics and Space
      Administration), non-profit and for-profit research and
      development organizations, federally funded research and
      development centers (FFRDCs), R&D activities of private
      enterprise, library facilities of all kinds, and primary and
      secondary schools.  The system is not intended to be discipline-
      specific.

      It is critical to recognize that even in the present Internet, it
      has been possible to accommodate a remarkable amalgam of private
      enterprise, academic institutions, government and military
      facilities.  Indeed, the very ability to accept such a diverse
      constituency turns on the increasing freedom of the so-called
      intermediate-level networks to accept an unrestricted set of
      users.  The growth in the size and diversity of Internet users, if
      it can be said to have been constrained at all, has been limited
      in part by usage constraints placed on the federally-sponsored
      national agency networks (e.g., NSFNET, NASA Science Internet,
      Energy Sciences Net, High Energy Physics Net, the recently
      deceased ARPANET, Defense Research Internet, etc.).  Given the
      purposes of these networks and the fiduciary responsibilities of
      the agencies that have created them, such usage constraints seem
      highly appropriate.  It may be beneficial to search for less



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