
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, September 8, 1994                   TAG: 9409080086
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SCIENCE FOUNDATION TURNS OVER INTERNET

For 25 years, from its founding by the Defense Department as a tool for the scientific elite to its recent astounding growth like some ferocious strain of fiber-optic ivy, the amorphous computer network known as the Internet has been anchored financially and technologically by the federal government.

Not anymore.

As the 'Net celebrates its silver anniversary this month, the National Science Foundation - which has been spending more than $10 million a year administering the central ``backbone'' of the Internet - is preparing to relinquish the world's closest thing to an information highway to the free market.

Many longtime users believe the move is crucial to the growth of the network. People still can find and exchange an enormous amount of data and chat cheaply over thousands of miles, but the Internet is becoming strained by the influx of the curious and the commercial into what was once the preserve of researchers.

But others fear that pieces of the Internet could split apart as profit replaces sharing as the motive to link it all together. As the network of networks becomes central to commerce and begins to touch the lives of ordinary citizens, the stakes in its responsible operation have grown exponentially.

``It's going to be like the Copernican revolution, when people suddenly realized the universe did not have a center,'' said Bill Washburn, who heads a consortium of smaller networks that is one of many entities hoping to profit from the new Internet order.

``The Internet is anarchy, it's a form of chaos, and with the disappearance of the NSF network, that chaotic quality will become more immediate and more evident to a lot of people who have been able to ignore it.''

Whatever the outcome, the quasi-public network has arrived at a watershed as it begins the first stages of official privatization.

``This is an immense change affecting millions of people, and tens of thousands of individual networks,'' says NSF networking chief Stephen Wolff, who has spearheaded the move. ``But the marketplace is there now, and there's no point in having the federal government competing with the private sector.''

by CNB