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The Role of Government in the
Evolution of the Internet
ROBERT E. KAHN
This paper discusses the role of government in the continuing
evolution of the Internet. From its origins as a U.S. government
research project, the Internet has grown to become a major compo-
nent of network infrastructure, linking millions of machines and tens
of millions of users around the world. Although many nations are
now involved with the Internet in one way or another, this paper
focuses on the primary role the U.S. government has played in the
Internet's evolution and discusses the role that governments around
the world may have to play as it continues to develop.
Very little of the current Internet is owned, operated, or even
controlled by governmental bodies. The Internet indirectly receives
government support through federally funded academic facilities that
provide some network-related services. Increasingly, however, the
provision of Internet communication services, regardless of use, is
being handled by commercial firms on a profit-making basis.
This situation raises the question of the proper long-term role for
government in the continued evolution of the Internet. Is the Internet
now in a form where government involvement should cease entirely,
leaving private-sector interests to determine its future? Or, does
A version of this paper appeared in the August 1994 issue of Communications of
the ACM.
13
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ROBERT E. KAHN
government still have an important role to play? This paper con-
cludes that government can still make a series of important contribu-
tions. Indeed, there are a few areas in which government involve-
ment will be vital to the long-term well-being of the Internet.
ORIGINS OF THE INTERNET
The Internet originated in the early 1970s as part of an Advanced
Research Projects Agency (ARPA) research project on "internet-
working." At that time, ARPA demonstrated the viability of packet
switching for computer-to-computer communication in its flagship
network, the ARPANET, which linked several dozen sites and per-
haps twice that number of computers into a national network for
computer science research. Extensions of the packet-switching con-
cept to satellite networks and to ground-based mobile radio networks
were also under development by ARPA, and segments of industry
(notably not the traditional telecommunications sector) were show-
ing great interest in providing commercial packet network services.
It seemed likely that at least three or four distinct computer networks
would exist by the mid-1970s and that the ability to communicate
among these networks would be highly desirable if not essential.
In a well-known joint effort that took place around 1973, Robert
Kahn, then at ARPA, and Vinton Cerf, then at Stanford, collaborated
on the design of an internetwork architecture that would allow packet
networks of different kinds to interconnect and machines to commu-
nicate across the set of interconnected networks. The internetwork
architecture was based on a protocol that came to be known as TCP/
IF. The period from 1974 to 1978 saw four successively refined
versions of the protocol implemented and tested by ARPA research
contractors in academia and industry, with version number four even-
tually becoming standardized. The TCP/IP protocol was used ini-
tially to connect the ARPANET, based on 50 kilobits per second
(kbps) terrestrial lines; the Packet Radio Net (PRNET), based on dual
rate 400/100 kbps spread spectrum radios; and the Packet Satellite
Net (SATNET), based on a 64 kbps shared channel on Intelsat IV.
The initial satellite Earth stations were in the United States and the
United Kingdom, but subsequently additional Earth stations were
activated in Norway, Germany, and Italy. Several experimental
PRNETs were connected, including one in the San Francisco Bay
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EVOLUTION OF THE INTERNET
15
area. At the time, no personal computers, workstations, or local area
networks were available commercially, and the machines involved
were mainly large-scale scientific time-sharing systems. Remote
access to time-sharing systems was made available by terminal ac-
cess servers.
The technical tasks involved in constructing this initial ARPA
Internet revolved mainly around the configuration of "gateways,"
now known as routers, to connect different networks, as well as the
development of TCP/IP software in the computers. These were both
engineering-intensive tasks that took considerable expertise to ac-
complish. By the mid-1980s, industry began offering commercial
gateways and routers and started to make available TCP/IP software
for some workstations, minicomputers, and mainframes. Before this,
these capabilities were unavailable; they had to be handcrafted by the
engineers at each site.
In 1979, ARPA established a small Internet Configuration Con-
trol Board (ICCB), most of whose members belonged to the research
community, to help with this process and to work with ARPA in
evolving the Internet design. The establishment of the ICCB was
important because it brought a wider segment of the research com-
munity into the Internet decision-making process, which until then
had been the almost-exclusive bailiwick of ARPA. Initially, the
ICCB was chaired by a representative of ARPA and met several
times a year. As interest in the ARPA Internet grew, so did interest in
the work of the ICCB.
During this early period, the U.S. government, mainly ARPA,
funded research and development work on networks and supported
the various networks in the ARPA Internet by leasing and buying
components and contracting out the system's day-to-day operational
management. The government also maintained responsibility for
overall policy. In the mid- to late 1970s, experimental local area
networks and experimental workstations, which had been developed
in the research community, were connected to the Internet according
to the level of engineering expertise at each site. In the early 1980s,
Internet-compatible commercial workstations and local area networks
became available, significantly easing the task of getting connected
to the Internet.
The U.S. government also awarded contracts for the support of
various aspects of Internet infrastructure, including the maintenance
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ROBERT E. KAHN
of lists of hosts and their addresses on the network. Other govern-
ment-funded groups monitored and maintained the key gateways be-
tween the Internet networks in addition to supporting the networks
themselves. In 1980, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) adopted
the TCP/IP protocol as a standard and began to use it. By the early
1980s, it was clear that the internetwork architecture that ARPA had
created was a viable technology for wider use in defense.
EMERGENCE OF THE OPERATIONAL INTERNET
The DOD had become convinced that if its use of network-
ing were to grow, it needed to split the ARPA Internet (called
ARPANET) in two. One of the resulting networks, to be known as
MILNET, would be used for military purposes and mainly link mili-
tary sites in the United States. The remaining portion of the network
would continue to bear the name ARPANET and still be used for
research purposes. Since both would use the TCP/IP protocol, com-
puters on the MILNET would still be able to talk to computers on the
new ARPANET, but the MILNET network nodes would be located
at protected sites. If problems developed on the ARPANET, the
MILNET could be disconnected quickly from it by unplugging the
small number of gateways that connected them. In fact, these gate-
ways were designed to limit the interactions between the two net-
works to the exchange of electronic mail, a further safety feature.
By the early 1980s, the ARPA Internet was known simply as the
Internet, and the number of connections to it continued to grow.
Recognizing the importance of networking to the larger computer
science community, the National Science Foundation (NSF) began
supporting CSNET, which connected a select group of computer
science researchers to the emerging Internet. This allowed new re-
search sites to be placed on the ARPANET at NSF's expense, and it
allowed other new research sites to be connected via a commercial
network, TELENET, which would be gatewayed to the ARPANET.
CSNET also provided the capacity to support dial-up e-mail connec-
tions. In addition, access to the ARPANET was informally extended
to researchers at numerous sites, thus helping to further spread the
networking technology within the scientific community. Also during
this period, other federal agencies with computer-oriented research
programs, notably the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National
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EVOLUTION OF THE INTERNET
17
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), created their own
"community networks."
The TCP/IP protocol adopted by DOD a few years earlier was
only one of many such standards. Although it was the only one that
dealt explicitly with internetworking of packet networks, its use was
not yet mandated on the ARPANET. However, on January 1, 1983,
TCP/IP became the standard for the ARPANET, replacing the older
host protocol known as NCP. This step was in preparation for the
ARPANET-MILNET split, which was to occur about a year later.
Mandating the use of TCP/IP on the ARPANET encouraged the addi-
tion of local area networks and also accelerated the growth in num-
bers of users and networks. At the same time, it led to a rethinking of
the process that ARPA was using to manage the evolution of the
network.
In 1983, ARPA replaced the ICCB with the Internet Activities
Board (IAB). The IAB was constituted similarly to the old ICCB, but
the many issues of network evolution were delegated to 10 task forces
chartered by and reporting to the JAB. The IAB was charged with
assisting ARPA to meet its Internet-related R&D objectives; the chair
of the IAB was selected from the research community supported by
ARPA. ARPA also began to delegate to the IAB the responsibility
for conducting the standards-setting process.
Following the CSNET effort, NSF and ARPA worked together
to expand the number of users on the ARPANET, but they were
constrained by the limitations that DOD placed on the use of the
network. By the mid-1980s, however, network connectivity had be-
come sufficiently central to the workings of the computer science
community that NSF became interested in broadening the use of
networking to other scientific disciplines. The NSF supercomputer
centers program represented a major stimulus to broader use of net-
works by providing limited access to the centers via the ARPANET.
At about the same time, ARPA decided to phase out its network
research program, only to reconsider this decision about a year later
when the seeds for the subsequent high-performance computer initia-
tive were planted by the Reagan administration and then-Sen. Albert
Gore (D-Tenn.~. In this period, NSF formulated a strategy to assume
responsibility for the areas of leadership that ARPA had formerly
held and planned to field an advanced network called NSFNET.
NSFNET was to join the NSF supercomputer centers with very high
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ROBERT E. KAHN
speed links, then 1.5 megabits per second (mbps), and to provide
members of the U.S. academic community access to the NSF super-
computer centers and to one another.1
Under a cooperative agreement between NSF and Merit, Inc., the
NSFNET backbone was put into operation in 1988 and, because of its
higher speed, soon replaced the ARPANET as the backbone of choice.
In 1990, ARPA decommissioned the last node of the ARPANET. It
was replaced by the NSFNET backbone and a series of regional
networks most of which were funded by or at least started with funds
from the U.S. government and were expected to become self-sup-
porting soon thereafter. The NSF effort greatly expanded the in-
volvement of many other groups in providing as well as using net-
work services. This expansion followed as a direct result of the
planning for the High Performance Computing Initiative (HPCI),
which was being formed at the highest levels of government. DOD
still retained the responsibility for control of the Internet name and
address space, although it continued to contract out the operational
aspects of the system.
The DOE and NASA both rely heavily on networking capability
to support their missions. In the early 1980s, they built High Energy
Physics Net (HEPNET) and Space Physics Analysis Net (SPAN),
both based on Digital Equipment Corporation's DECNET protocols.
Later, DOE and NASA developed the Energy Sciences Net (ESNET)
and the NASA Science Internet (NSI), respectively; these networks
supported both TCP/IP and DECNET services. These initiatives
were early influences on the development of the multiprotocol net-
working technology that was subsequently adopted in the Internet.
International networking activity was also expanding in the early
and mid-1980s. Starting with a number of networks based on the
X.25 standard as well as international links to ARPANET, DECNET,
and SPAN, the networks began to incorporate open internetworking
protocols. Initially, Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) protocols
were used most frequently. Later, the same forces that drove the
United States to use TCP/IP availability in commercial worksta-
tions and local area networks—caused the use of TCP/IP to grow
internationally.
1 For a brief period in the mid-1980s, there was a small initial NSFNET that linked
the supercomputer centers with 64 kbps lines.
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EVOLUTION OF THE INTERNET
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The number of task forces under the IAB continued to grow, and
in 1989, the IAB consolidated them into two groups: the Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Research Task Force
(IRTF). The IETF, which had been formed as one of the original 10
IAB Task Forces, was given responsibility for near-term Internet
developments and for generating options for the IAB to consider as
Internet standards. The IRTF remained much smaller than the IETF
and focused more on longer-range research issues. The IAB struc-
ture, with its task-force mechanism, opened up the possibility of
getting broader involvement from the private sector without the need
for government to pay directly for their participation. The federal
role continued to be limited to oversight control of the Internet name
and address space, the support of IETF meetings, and sponsorship of
many of the research participants. By the end of the 1980s, IETF
began charging a nominal attendance fee to cover the costs of its
meetings.
The opening of the Internet to commercial usage was a signifi-
cant development in the late 1980s. As a first step, commercial e-
mail providers were allowed to use the NSFNET backbone to com-
municate with authorized users of the NSFNET and other federal
research networks. Regional networks, initially established to serve
the academic community, had in their efforts to become self-suffi-
cient taken on nonacademic customers as an additional revenue
source. NSF's Acceptable Use Policy, which restricted backbone
usage to traffic within and for the support of the academic commu-
nity, together with the growing number of nonacademic Internet us-
ers, led to the formation of two privately funded and competing
Internet carriers, both spin-offs of U.S. government programs. They
were UUNET Technologies, a product of a DOD-funded seismic
research facility, and Performance Systems International (PSI), which
was formed by a subset of the officers and directors of NYSERNET,
the NSF-sponsored regional network in New York and the lower
New England states.
Beginning in 1990, Internet use was growing by more than 10
percent a month. This expansion was fueled significantly by the
enormous growth on the NSFNET and included a major commercial
and international component. NSF helped to stimulate this growth by
funding both incremental and fundamental improvements in Internet
routing technology as well as by encouraging the widespread distri-
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ROBERT E. KAHN
button of network software from its supercomputer centers. Inter-
connections between commercial and other networks are arranged in
a variety of ways, including through the use of the Commercial
Internet Exchange (CIX), which was established, in part, to facilitate
packet exchanges among commercial service providers.
Recently, the NSF decided that additional funding for the
NSFNET backbone no longer was required. The agency embarked
on a plan to make the NSF regional networks self supporting over a
period of several years. To assure the scientific research community
of continued network access, NSF made competitively chosen awards
to several parties to provide network access points (NAPs) in four
cities. NSF also selected MCI to provide a very high speed backbone
service, initially at 155 mbps, linking the NAPs and several other
sites, and a routing arbiter to oversee certain aspects of traffic alloca-
tion in this new architecture.
The Internet Society was formed in 1992 by the private sector to
help promote the evolution of the Internet, including maintenance of
the Internet standards process. In 1992 the IAB was reconstituted as
the Internet Architecture Board, which became part of the Internet
Society. It delegated its decision-making responsibility on Internet
standards to the leadership of the IETF, known as the Internet Engi-
neering Steering Group (IESG). While not a part of the Internet
Society, the IETF produces technical specifications as possible can-
didates for future protocols. The Internet Society now maintains the
Internet Standards Process, and the work of the IETF is carried out
under its auspices.
ISSUES FOR CONSIDERATION
As the Internet continues to grow, the role of the research com-
munity in developing and evolving standards needs to be addressed.
When the financial implications of decisions about Internet standards
were relatively small, the current standards process proved entirely
satisfactory. As the financial impact of such decisions becomes in-
creasingly significant, the nature of the standards-setting process will
continue to change to allow more direct industrial involvement. How
this will ultimately play out is unclear. However, the vitality of the
current process derives from the broad involvement of the many
communities that have a stake in the Internet. Unlike typical top-
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EVOLUTION OF THE INTERNET
21
down standards-setting operations that implement decisions formed
by consensus, the Internet process works essentially in reverse
through a kind of grass-roots mechanism. Candidates for Internet
standards ordinarily result from actual implementation and wide-
spread experimentation within the IETF. The most promising of
these candidates are selected for placement on the Internet standards
track. No better process has yet emerged that is as dynamic and
allows as much direct involvement by industry.
Further, with the widespread internationalization of the Internet,
scores of countries now have fundamental interests in its evolution.
Within the United States, the Internet is seen in many quarters as the
starting point for the National Information Infrastructure (NII).
Around the world, there is growing recognition that the set of NIIs
(assuming each country commits to developing one) should be com-
patible with each other along some still-unknown dimensions. Who
should take the lead in ensuring this compatibility? Is this a role for
the private sector, for governments acting together, or for some com-
bination of the two? There is clearly a role for government, at least to
provide oversight, support, and guidance, if not to participate actively.
Apart from these issues is concern about the viability of any
approach that has no individual or organization with overall responsi-
bility for its evolution. It seems fair to say that many of the tradi-
tional Internet carriers would prefer that new capabilities be provided
by them as a turnkey service. Industry surely has the capacity to
provide many of the necessary capabilities, but history has shown the
importance of government involvement. What guarantees that the
same degree of vitality will be part of its future evolution if market
forces alone determine what new capabilities are added to the Inter-
net? Furthermore, the Internet offers the possibility of bypassing
conventional semice offerings by regulated carriers. This may both
make it extremely difficult for the regulated carriers to compete ef-
fectively in certain areas and make it hard for government regula-
tors to ignore the Internet.
Finally, the carriers can only go so far in providing Internet
services. Ultimately, the communication pathways must enter the
user's machine, pass through layers of software and end up in appli-
cations programs. The computer industry, along with the many ven-
dors of computer-related equipment, must play a role in determining
how this aspect of the Internet will evolve. The nature of technologi-
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ROBERT E. KAHN
cal innovation almost guarantees that many new technological op-
tions will continue to be generated from many different sources and
make their appearance throughout the Internet. Thus, it appears that
no single entity can possibly be in charge of the Internet. A key to the
success of the Internet is to insure that the interested parties have a
fair and equitable way of participating in its evolution, including
participation in its also-evolving standards process. A proper role for
governments would be to oversee this process to make sure that it
remains fair and meets the wide spectrum of public needs.
An international infrastructure like the Internet will ultimately
require countries to set policy on many of the details that are now
taken for granted. For example, Internet names and addresses may
take on additional legal meanings in the various countries as they rely
on the Internet to a greater degree. Trademark of Internet names and
addresses is only one aspect of concern. Contracts of all sorts may
have Internet names and addresses embedded within them. How can
the countries have confidence in the use of such names and addresses
for legal purposes without necessarily assuming responsibility for the
day-to-day operation of this aspect of the system? Computer viruses
know no national boundaries. If a major "infection" should strike
multiple countries, how will those countries work together to respond
to such a situation? Finally, the ability to conduct network-based
business between countries will require the resolution of many legal
issues, including the formalization of legal contracts online and the
ability to deal with associated customs and trade-related matters. At
its core, the issue of online legal contracts seems to require the use of
encryption technology, which has been perhaps the most closely held
of all the network-oriented technologies. How can this kind of capa-
bility be made available in the international arena in ways that are
acceptable to national authorities? More generally, how can issues
like those described above, which are likely to arise in the future, be
effectively discussed and resolved?
Various subsets of these kinds of problems have arisen in the
context of other international public networks, including for tele-
phones, and are thus neither unique nor entirely new. As the Internet
continues to grow, many of the approaches developed for earlier
technologies may apply to the Internet. Some combination of public-
and private-sector involvement will probably be required to deal with
these problems more generally.
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EVOLUTION OF THE INTERNET
23
Governments have a fundamental role to play in the funding of
advanced research and development that can push forward the fron-
tiers of technology and knowledge. Often, this will involve the
development and use of pilot projects to test new ideas in the real
world. It also seems clear that governments must provide the neces-
sary oversight to insure that the standards-setting process is equi-
table. Governments must also take responsibility for helping to
resolve problems that arise because of independent decisions made
by multiple countries, for example in legal, security, or regulatory
matters. In the case of U.S. infrastructure development, the govern-
ment must provide leadership in many dimensions, including the
removal of barriers where they inhibit progress; the insertion of
legal, security, or regulatory mechanisms where the national interest
so dictates; and the direct stimulation of public-interest sectors, for
example in research, education, and certain network aspects of pub-
lic health, safety, and universal access that require government as-
sistance. Other nations also may find similar incentives for govern-
ment involvement.
Two final observations seem appropriate. First, it will be essen-
tial to separate the process by which standards are selected for the
Internet from the process by which the variety of possible options are
generated. The current situation is almost ideal, since standards are
selected by a process akin to ratification only after independent imple-
mentation has produced the viable options. This separation needs to
be maintained.
Second, the most important use of the Internet, and indeed the
NII, will be to allow individuals to communicate with each other and
to rapidly access information. In many cases, this information will be
the intellectual property of others. Every Internet user will also have
the opportunity to become a potential provider of information ser-
vices, thereby vastly increasing the amount of information available.
How much of this information may be deemed valuable in a literary
or business sense remains to be determined, but much of it may be
important in other contexts. It is essential that we sensitize individu-
als to the value of intellectual property and the need to protect it.
This will have the side benefit of encouraging others to develop and
make available intellectual property of their own. A combination of
ethics, technology, and law are needed to ensure the effective devel-
opment of this important aspect of the Internet.
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ROBERT E. KAHN
CONCLUSIONS
Over a span of some 20 years, the role of the U.S. government in
the evolution of the Internet has changed. While the federal govern-
ment took the lead in virtually every aspect of Internet in the early
days, it currently plays a more limited role. The government is now
a major funder of network R&D and provides significant oversight of
the evolution of the Internet. It provides direct support or even con-
trol for several key aspects of the Internet's operation, such as the
assignment of unique names and addresses and the assurance of ad-
equate backbone capability, although it may decide to relinquish some
of these responsibilities in the future. It continues to stimulate the
development of Internet architecture in healthy new directions.
Although the role of the U.S. government in the Internet has
been declining steadily for several years, particularly as private-sec-
tor interest in the Internet has increased, there is a major continuing
set of roles and responsibilities for government to undertake, both in
the United States and around the world. Governments must be in-
volved in decisions about how different countries cooperate on vari-
ous aspects of the Internet and its use, and they must continue to
oversee the network's evolution, both nationally and internationally.
Other national governments may, but need not, assume the leadership
role that the U.S. government has traditionally played in the United
States. Without substantial U.S. involvement however, it is doubtful
whether the NII will become a reality. And without government
involvement on an international scale, it is unlikely that a global
information infrastructure will emerge or that the Internet will con-
tinue to evolve in a vital and dynamic way.
Taking a long view, network and computer technologies are still
in their infancy, and many of their current uses reflect past practices
carried out more effectively in new environments. The real challenge
will be for the public and private sectors to work together to harness
the still-untapped potential of new and increasingly powerful tech-
nologies in the network-based setting of the NII, and to nourish and
incubate the powerful, even revolutionary, new ideas that are certain
to surface in the future.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
government involvement
