From: "E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>
Date: Tue, 7 May 1996 13:16:38 +0800
To: sjb@universe.digex.net
Subject: Re: PICS required by laws
Message-ID: <01I4E5BWF1628Y583T@mbcl.rutgers.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


From:	IN%"sjb@universe.digex.net"  "Scott Brickner"  6-MAY-1996 14:23:50.08

>The problem is that it requires the cooperation of both of your ISPs.
>You'll never receive packets to route from either of them unless you
>have some sort of contract in place.  In the scenario I outlined, the
>"common carrier" status of the ISPs is contingent on their following
>the censorship protocol, so their contract will require that you, too,
>follow it.

	How difficult would it be to set up a router protocol to automatically
select any from a series of other routers that announced itself willing (for a
certain amount of ecash, perhaps)? I had thought that this was pretty close to
the case in any event, for small networks anyway - and connections between
small networks can interconnect into one large network.

>Even in the face of a "digital silk road", this isn't likely to
>change.  The cost of operating a router is proportional to the number
>of connections it has.  The vast majority of traffic doesn't have
>stringent enough delay requirements that it'll be willing to pay the
>additional cost of going through a very highly connected router.
>Therefore the hierarchical star configuration is near-optimal for
>normal traffic (and pretty much all of the stuff that they claim they
>want to censor).

	Directly proportional? I'd think there would have to be somewhat of
a fixed cost involved. The question is whether the fixed cost (including the
cost of a router to handle the ever-increasing bandwidth) is dropping faster
than the cost of the number of connections. And your "normal traffic" doesn't
seem to be including Internet Phone, which I can see being a major source of
bandwidth in the future.
	-Allen