Date: 01/01/1991
ANS CO+REIn 1991 a new ISP, ANS CO+RE (commercial plus research), was created as a for-profit subsidiary of the non-profit Advanced Network and Services. ANS CO+RE was created specifically to allow commercial traffic on ANSNet without jeopardizing its parent’s non-profit status or violating any tax laws.
The NSFNET Backbone Service and ANS CO+RE both used and shared the common ANSNet infrastructure. NSF agreed to allow ANS CO+RE to carry commercial traffic subject to several conditions:
- that the NSFNET Backbone Service was not diminished;
- that ANS CO+RE recovered at least the average cost of the commercial traffic traversing the network; and
- that any excess revenues recovered above the cost of carrying the commercial traffic would be placed into an infrastructure pool to be distributed by an allocation committee broadly representative of the networking community to enhance and extend national and regional networking infrastructure and support.
ANS and in particular ANS CO+RE were involved in the controversies over who and how commercial traffic should be carried over what had, until recently, been a government sponsored networking infrastructure. These controversies are discussed in the “Commercial ISPs, ANS CO+RE, and the CIX” and “Controversy” sections of the NSFNET article.