The focus of this group was either military/government or research and education communications, especially support for the separately funded NSF supercomputing initiatives that started after Nobel Prize laureate Ken Wilson's testimony to Congress in the 1980s.
There were of course many organizations that wanted access to the Internet, but did not do work directly for or with federal agency or in support of research and education.
In 1988, the Federal Networking Council allowed the Corporation for National Research Initiatives CNRI to develop a gateway between the commercial MCI Mail.
[3][4] While testing was originally done in the Washington, DC area, commercial operations began at a PSInet facility in Santa Clara, California in the Fall of 1991.
The CIX established the business model for the settlement-free exchange of Internet traffic between Network Service Providers.
[7] The hardware, a Cisco 7500 router, that had been the workhorse for most of the CIX's operational life (though not at its inception), together with papers and notes from the founding meetings (donated by Bill Schrader of PSINET) were acquired by the National Museum of American History in November 2005.
[11][12][13] CIX also appeared in other forums such as before the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)[9] and Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
AT&T, the long distance company, came under financial strain during the dot-com bust prior to being acquired by SBC, and its support for CIX diminished.
While AT&T continues to support USIPSA, USISPA no longer takes policy stances at the FCC in opposition to SBC or other bell operating companies.