Dave, good post, and thanks for saving us some time. I am less enamored with these initiatives today than I was a year or two ago. Take a good look at the goals that were stated throughout your post.
The folks who wrote these frameworks were well intentioned, I'm sure, but they didn't keep track of projections. In fairness, though, the bandwidth rush really hit everyone by surprise, so I don't blame them at all, given that even Vint Cerf himself, during the stated time frame, along with everyone else who one would think should have known better, was caught short for words to explain the bandwidth phenomenon, at times.
Today, such entities as AboveNet and Enron Comms, to name just two companies who weren't even known at the time that the I2 and NGI initiatives were drawn up, have already transcended many of the goals that were set back then, within the blink of an unfettered, non-bureaucratic eye, administratively, and relatively, speaking.
DWDM, I'm quite certain, was a known future at the time, but they didn't take the impact of DWDM into full account, nor did they consider the fact that startups would be beating them to the punch with their own private undertakings at four to sixteen times the speeds that they had earmarked as being milestones for the future.
The confusion that the article speaks of is actually written in a very kind and gentle way, by some measures. Writers can rationalize the differences between these initiatives all they want, but when the rubber hits the road the only delineating criteria are those which are stipulated in grants, awards and contracts by the numerous federal agencies who have custodial duties in administering the various initiatives.
The problem here is, of course, that those same agencies are administering multiple initiatives, and their project venues often have overlapping structural considerations which cross between the definitions which were set up for each of the stated initiatives. Have you ever heard of two guys named Peter and Paul?
Take it from someone who wrote RFP replies to the Federal and State Governments while doing pro bono work for the largest public educational institutions on the east coast, I know what I'm talking about here. While partnering with several CLECs, who shall remain nameless because I can't come up with anything nice to say about how they behaved in these situations, and as an Industrial Partner to NASA for several years, I saw more creative allocationing done during that time than in the entirety of the remainder of my thirty some odd years in this business. Nothing that I saw, however, was unethical, but wow did I see some hip shooting, as to what initiative's funding was to be taken from here to be spent there.
Why am I stating these facts? Because while it might appear that the big HQs office in Washington DC has some definitive notion as to an established divine structure which spells out the differences between these initiatives, in the end many of the conditions which your article covered are still being administered from the seat of the pants, often governed by the rules of serendipity.
Having stated all of the above, I still acknowledge that there have been far greater benefits than detriments derived from these initiatives. This is, after all, the mode of nourishment and collaboration, imperfect as it is, that made the original work on the Internet possible in the first place, some thirty years ago.
Just don't let any journo try to tell you that they can discern the differences between these initiatives, or characterize them as distinct from one another, in any material way. If you come across one who would attempt to snow you on this matter, send them to me.
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
