At the time the National Science Foundation (NSF) believed in a settlement model based on usage, with payments or contributions based on how much data was sent or received, mirroring the public X.25 networks at that time. Such a settlement policy would allow research and education and commercial traffic to share a common network infrastructure without using NSF funds to support the commercial use. NSF in fact entered into an agreement with the non-profit Advanced Network and Services to allow commercial traffic through a for-profit subsidiary, ANS CO+RE (commercial plus research), subject to the conditions (i) that the NSFNET Backbone Service was not diminished; (ii) that ANS CO+RE recovered at least the average cost of the commercial traffic traversing the network; and (iii) that any excess revenues recovered above the cost of carrying the commercial traffic would be placed into an infrastructure pool to be distributed by an allocation committee broadly representative of the networking community to enhance and extend national and regional networking infrastructure and support.