Re: POLICY ALERT: College and University CALEA Exemption Rests on Private Network Status

["David L. Wasley" <dlwasley () EARTHLINK NET>]

I have to say that the people involved in making and interpreting
these rules do not seem to have the technical background to
understand what they're dealing with.  Specifically the following
doesn't make any sense:

> "An institution should be exempt where it restricts the use of its
> network to particular classes of users (e.g., students, faculty, and
> administrators), and where the institution relies on a third party
> (such as a commercial ISP or a regional network) to provide the
> transmission and switching facilities used to route traffic to the
> Internet, rather than self-supplying such facilities," the analysis
> concludes.
>
> The FCC order explicitly states that colleges and universities
> operating private broadband networks will be subject to the new
> obligations if they support a connection to the Internet. The FCC
> explained during the court proceedings that "support" refers to
> "private network operators that provide their own connection to the
> Internet," as opposed to "those that contract with an ISP for that
> connection."

To say that a campus network is not part of the Internet but that it
becomes so if it provides it's own cable to some external node is
ludicrous.  As we all know, the "Internet" is the intersection of all
IP-based networks, etc....

I would suggest a more sensible "interpretation" be something like
the following.  A "private network" is one operated for a specific
community (e.g. university campus).  The edge of that network is the
point at which traffic to or from that community may be merged with
traffic to or from other communities.

Under this "interpretation" the cable connecting a campus network to
the nearest Internet access node is part of the "private network"
because it carries only traffic originating in or destined to the
campus's network.

That said, a campus would be strongly advised -not- to provide "back
door" Internet connections to non-university organizations, e.g. a
research or business partner.  This would result in a co-mingling of
traffic that would render the campus network no longer a "private
network" under CALEA.

Whether non-university housing units, e.g. apartment complexes
occupied primarily by students, could be accommodated is a judgement
call, much like the "library terminal" use case.  I wonder what other
real world cases there are.

Perhaps I am missing some subtlety here but I'm trying to make some
rational sense out of this craziness.

        David