In some ways, I helped put the “inter” into the Internet because it was the first time these administratively-different networks were connected together and could connect together as they wished.
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This is something which we believe has to be stressed, that there are users which cannot be served by the commercial networks at the moment at a decent price. Everything eventually comes down to price and the idea of being able to have aggregated networks which can be used by high-performance users as well as the less-aggressive people, if you like, can be built and operated economically if you have the right conditions.
The first Internet exchange without a gateway in the middle appears to have been in College Park, beginning in about 1986, and I was fortunate enough to be at the right place at the right time.