At 17:09 13-5-2002, Michel Py wrote:

This is a grey area for sure. I don't think that providing access to currently enrolled students can reasonably be considered bad use of public money, for the good reason that a simple accounting trick will assign that to tuition fees students do pay. Besides, access to the university's computer resources is mandatory for studying, and a university provided dial pool does have some operational advantages in terms of security.

Oh well, I'll pitch in on the discussion what universities do with their networks, having been the vice-chairman of Twente University's campus network (which included dial-in, ADSL and cable). Twente University saw it as a strategic decision for getting new students, changing the way people study and to support new (business) initiatives of students, to provide all on campus rooms in '94 with 10mbit connections (now 100mbit switched). Later they have extended these connections to every student and employee, so that they can now get a 130.89.x.x connection over cable, adsl, or POTS in the region of the university. For everything off-campus they made use of businesses, who were happy enough to have such a big customer. The university used its power to buy wholesale to get cheaper and better connections for all and realize the strategic objective that employees could work from anywhere. These are legitimate reasons and every business could/can offer to provide these services, so no anti-competitive behavior there. But yes, buying wholesale means that the profit per user is less for the provider, if anyone (Francis?) finds this anti-competitive... go ahead, challenge modern economics. :-) In the Netherlands Surfnet, the NREN, has been very active in hooking up student accommodations with fiber under the Gigaport FttD-project (Fiber to the Dormitory). The motivation for this was, that there would be no commercial provider willing to do this and offer gigabit connections to the dorms. Furthermore these projects are very helpful as pilots for fiber to the home projects. It has always been the goal of academic networks to support new developments. So I don't see a problem there either. A nice added bonus for providers is, that students that have tasted the sweetness of 100mbit links to the internet will generally opt for ADSL of cable services when they leave university.

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In terms of the get-outs, I expect that commercial spin-offs or products from the universities (e.g. a university selling intelligent widgets) may be hosted from a university with such a spin-off.

Most of these will get grants that include cash from the university, there is nothing fundamentally wrong in making connectivity part of the grant.

Agree, another way of solving it is what Twente University recently did.. They allowed separate VLAN's over their campus infrastructure, so that commercial parties on campus could hook up to commercial providers connected to the nearby internet exchange. Before this, commercial use was explicitly forbidden, because it violated the rules for use of the NREN. Now the commercial traffic is nicely routed of campus to a commercial party that can charge it. So no anti-competitive behavior there either. Even better... new business opportunities have emerged for some ISP's. Rudolf van der Berg Dutch German Internet Exchange (NDIX) http://www.ndix.net