In 1992, the U.S. Congress passed the Scientific and Advanced-Technology Act, , which allowed NSF to support access by the research and education communities to computer networks which were not used exclusively for research and education purposes, thus permitting NSFNET to interconnect with commercial networks.Even after the appropriations act was amended in 1992 to give NSF more flexibility with regard to commercial traffic, NSF never felt that it could entirely do away with its Acceptable Use Policy and its restrictions on commercial traffic, see the response to Recommendation 5 in NSF's response to the Inspector General's review (an April 19, 1993 memo from Frederick Bernthal, Acting Director, to Linda Sundro, Inspector General, that is included at the end of Review of NSFNET, Office of the Inspector General, National Science Foundation, March 23, 1993) This caused controversy within the research and education community, who were concerned commercial use of the network might lead to an Internet that was less responsive to their needs, and within the community of commercial network providers, who felt that government subsidies were giving an unfair advantage to some organizations.Management of NSFNET, a transcript of the March 12, 1992 hearing before the Subcommittee on Science of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives, One Hundred Second Congress, Second Session, Hon. Rick Boucher, subcommittee chairman, presiding
