Re: Defining "on the Internet"

[Dave Crocker <[e-mail]>]

Tony,

At 5:53 PM 8/13/94, Tony Rutkowski wrote:
>These are the key distinctions that seem to elude many media people.
>
>Can we get these embodied in a RFC?  I'll then tailor future Internet Society
>charts and press releases along these lines, and maybe the Internet Research
>Task Force can help with the metrics (Mike?)

I'd like to get more discussion and rough consensus before taking an
archival snapshot for public posterity.

John Quarterman and I have been having a background discussion and I'm
gravitating towards somewhat different labels for the first two.  The
challenge is to find terms that are meaningful with respect to general
service from the regular users' perspective, rather than in terms of the
esoteric, underlying technical fine points.

The current thought:

1.  Supplier-capable:  Machines which can provide services to the Internet.
While it is feasible to do this from behind a firewall (or the like) it is
not typical.  Hence, this category probably overlaps well with the
"pingable" techy measure we use.

2.  Interactive consumer:  Can access services on the Internet
interactively.  There are various ways to do this, today, from behind a
firewall or from a privately-numbered net, so this set of machines is
larger than the first.

3.  Global email:  All of the email systems which can exchange mail with,
and through, the Internet, independent of the native formats or transfer
protocols that are used.  I've removed the term "Internet" from this so
that shortening the name won't cause ambiguity.  (In general, you'll note
that none of the names share any vocabulary.)

Now, I'd like to get reactions from folks.  There's lots of terms possible.
The question is what provides the most help for making useful distinctions
among the Internet's mass market of users and suppliers?

d/

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Dave Crocker                            <[e-mail]>
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