The form taken by long-haul computer networking is largely determined by the service offerings and associated tarriffs of the local and long-distance communications carriers. This observation accounts for many of the differences- as well as the similarities- among national computer networks in Europe, for the slow implementation of, Pan-European networks, and for the unique structure of U.S. networks such as ARPANET, MFEnet, and NSFNET. Although it can be argued that the telephone companies are by nature ponderous and unresponsive, and hence constitutionally unable to meet the demands of the scientific research community for increasingly high-performance, full-featured networks, it may on the other hand be the case that scientists and the carriers have never met together in a serious attempt to understand the growth rate of the former's needs, and the capacity of the latter for change. Danny Cohen and Jon Postel propose to form a small working group and to hold a series of intensive meetings to plan proposals for communication services useful to the computer communication community that might be requested of the carriers.
