mcb@presto.ig.com (Michael C. Berch) (11/03/90)
In the referenced article, dhesi%cirrusl@oliveb.ATC.olivetti.com (Rahul Dhesi) writes: > While we're on the subject, the whole idea of requiring some sort of > leased line for Internet access is all wrong. In this age of > Trailblazers, low-volume access to a network shouldn't need to cost > more than $30/hour after hours plus $1.50 per month for maintaining the > account. Uhhh, $30/hour? That's about $21,000 per month, isn't it? Even assuming you typo'd "$30" for "$3" that would be $2,100/month which is still pretty high. Unless you meant some sort of access that would only be a few hours per day, which misses the main advantage of Internet access in the first place, which is real-time access to a large set of distributed resources. As an Internet user I can sit at my workstation during business hours and log in to remote accounts, FTP files to and from arbitrary locations all over the world, and send and receive mail that arrives in seconds or minutes. Dial-up SLIP or PPP on an after-hours batched basis can't offer those services and do not, to my mind, provide much of an advantage over dial-up UUCP. "Real" Internet access, to me, means real-time access. -- Michael C. Berch mcb@presto.ig.com / uunet!presto.ig.com!mcb / ames!bionet!mcb