Building the open road: The NREN as a test-bed for the National Public Network

While the National Research and Education Network will meet the computer and communication needs of scientists, researchers, and educators, its implementation should also be used as an opportunity to extend the benefits of public networking technology to new groups of users. If built in a competitive environment, according to the principles of open interconnection, adherence to nonproprietary standards, common carriage, easy-to-use user interfaces, and respect for personal privacy, the NREN could demonstrate the great potential of public broadband networks in the future. As policy makers debate the role of the public telephone and other existing information networks in the nation's information infrastructure, the NREN can serve as a working test-bed for new technologies, applications, and governing policies that will ultimately shape the growing National Public Network.This paper was originally written in September 1991, so legislative citations are not all to the latest version of NREN legislation.The authors wish to thank Art Kleiner and Danny Weitzner for contributing to the writing of this article. A version of the article will be published in Building Information Infrastructure: Issues in the Development of the National Research and Education Network (B. Kahin, ed., McGraw-Hill), a collection of papers from a symposium sponsored by the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program and Strategic Computing and Telecommunications in the Public Sector Program of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.