wnp@iiasa.AT (wolf paul) (08/31/90)
In article <1990Aug30.091435.1982@ircam.ircam.fr> mf@ircam.ircam.fr (Michel Fingerhut) writes: )While trying to find whether we (in France, Europe) could reach a site )in Germany (Europe), I got the following route from traceroute: ) )I.e.: Paris -> South France -> NJ -> PE -> Ithaca (upst. NY)-> ) Syracuse (upst. NY) -> NYC, NY -> ? -> Deutschland ) >Why this contorted route? Is it cost-effective? Well, I guess it has to do with the cost of leased lines used for internet connections. Since the bulk of internet activity takes place in Europe, most European countries have more direct links to sites in the US than they have to sites in other European countries. Since these leased lines are not really charged by volume but rather have a fixed monthly charge regardless of traffic, it probably does not affect the cost a whole lot. The Austrian branch of EUnet will shortly be connected to the Internet by a leased line from tuvie to mcsun; our organization may also get a leased line to tuvie, thus any internet connections from here to France will run via Holland. Mcsun is connected to the U.S.; unless there is a direct connection from mcsun to some French site you talk to directly, a connection from here to you would also run via the U.S. -- Wolf N. Paul, IIASA, A - 2361 Laxenburg, Austria, Europe PHONE: +43-2236-71521-465 FAX: +43-2236-71313 UUCP: uunet!iiasa.at!wnp INTERNET: wnp%iiasa.at@uunet.uu.net BITNET: tuvie!iiasa!wnp@awiuni01.BITNET * * * * Kurt Waldheim for President (of Mars, of course!) * * * *
mf@ircam.ircam.fr (Michel Fingerhut) (08/31/90)
Wolf Paul writes: > Since these leased lines are not really charged by volume but rather > have a fixed monthly charge regardless of traffic, it probably does not > affect the cost a whole lot. Well, it is not true insofar as the end user (which I am). As it appears, the French backbone will charge us Internet mail by volume. It has to do, apparently, with the cost of some line whose cost is fixed, but which they intend to share "equally well" among users -- ie the more you use it the more you pay for it. He adds: > The Austrian branch of EUnet will shortly be connected to the Internet > by a leased line from tuvie to mcsun [in Holland] Too bad. Although there is a line from France to Northern Yurop, there is no connection for academic sites from France to there. There is no rerouting through anywhere else, either. So this means that THERE IS NO INTERNET CONNECTION between any sites connected to mcsun and France. Mail goes around, I hope, but since I did not get to send any yet who knows. I suppose that when the various backbones sort their differences, we'll have to pay so as to get to Northern Y. I hope *they* will have to pay to get to us, but I suspect there is more interest in the connection from us out than the converse. So we loose.. Unless we give up on Northern Y. altogether and look as always in the US for software. So much for CEE, connectedness and other grandiose ideas.
eric@sunic.sunet.se (Eric Thomas SUNET) (09/01/90)
I don't want to sound mean, but this isn't an EEC problem, this is a french
problem. France is basically 5 years behind most other "rich" european
countries in terms of networking. There is a serious lack of TCP/IP
connectivity as you have mentioned. There is also a serious lack of decent
gateways between UUCP, the internet, BITNET, etc. Just yesterday I received
a message from some french UUCP site, through a gateway at ENS Lyon. The
'Return-Path:' field contained just the login name of the poster on the UUCP
machine, and the 'From:' field contained some UUCP routing information and no
host name. Needless to say it was impossible to reply to this message, apart
from the fact that RFC822 mailers don't know what to do with UUCP routing the
syntax of the field was simply invalid. I complained, but I doubt anything will
happen, meanwhile french users "in the know" make use of the CERN gateway,
because "it works", and french politicians are happy that the particular site
they are in charge of is getting more influence and that they have managed to
get some prestigious position in RARE Working Group so-and-so, and who cares
about the rest? :-)
Eric
PS: Sweden is not part of the EEC, and I am not precisely enthusiastic about
the way the EEC spends its networking money, but that is another story...piet@cwi.nl (Piet Beertema) (09/01/90)
>>Why this contorted route? Is it cost-effective? > >Well, I guess it has to do with the cost of leased lines used >for internet connections. It has nothing to do with costs, politics or such; it's just a small technical problem (a gateway not announcing a route) that can be solved quickly. -- Piet Beertema, CWI, Amsterdam (piet@cwi.nl)