idc@cs.hw.ac.uk (Ian Crorie) (07/04/89)
1. "Why do these Europeans have such a tightly controlled, hierarchical
organization for moving news?"
(i) The cost of international calls between European countries
is typically pretty high so having just one `gateway' site
per country makes financial sense.
(ii) It is difficult to separate news from mail. And EUNet
email just *has* to be organized this way.
Firstly, top level domains here are geographical. It makes
routing so simple if I can route mail for anything.whatever.de
to a German gateway. We don't (yet) have anything like MX
records and what sensible person wants to keep map files for
most of the world up to date? (The .uk domain has a few problems
here but that's another can of worms).
More importantly, EUNet sites have to pay to send mail to
other countries (in principle; in some countries it is sometimes
possible to route by another network).
We also have to pay to *receive* mail from the States.
Example:
I'm a german leaf site sending mail to bush@whitehousevax.uucp :
I pay for the call to unido
I pay for unido sending to mcvax
I pay for mcvax sending to uunet
...whitehousevax calls up uunet and pays for this
...bush replies, calls up uunet and pays for this
I pay for uunet sending to mcvax
I pay for mcvax sending to unido
I pay to call up unido
I'm not moaning at USENET in the U.S. The size of it and
the way it is (not) organized makes it inconceivable that
you could start charging people for their transatlantic mail.
It gets better every year as well; costs go down, mail goes
faster. The point is that EUNet has to be more organized.
This involves a lot of administrative work. I wouldn't want
to work in the same building just in case I ever had to do any
of it. It needs computers, disks, lines, maintenance
contracts, staff, accounting software for every mail message,
accounting software for billing, sending bills, sending
statements, hassling slow customers, liaising with other backbone
sites, with mcvax, with other networks in Europe, with customers,
writing newsletters, giving talks at seminars, hustling for
subsidies, hustling for resources within your company/university.
I must have missed out a lot.
Quite a few people have suggested changes in the charging
policy used by unido. Even if the current one *was*
inefficient or unfair (I've not seen enough info to even guess) it
has the advantage of following the system used for email, avoiding
some duplication of effort.
2. "Why is EUNet not more like the U.S. part of USENET - a site gets news
for free from a neighbour then offers a free feed in turn to others
(everyone pays their owns costs for transferring the news)?"
(i) We do that anyway. It's just the problem of getting news
into each country in the first place. So we pay that little
bit extra.
3. "It seems that German sites are paying more than a little bit extra!"
(i) Yes. They don't seem to have enough sites to spread the
financial burden around. Some countries have lots more
sites (see articles from Holland and the U.K.).
It would be great if unido could come up with some marketing
plan to lower the charges to a level attractive enough that
the German part of USENET really took off. Ten times as
many sites paying a tenth as much money, that sort of thing.
But they are a University, not a company. Difficult to
raise the venture capital for such a scheme from their
accountants (;-).
4. "What would be wrong with a U.S. site offering a European one a
trailblazer feed bypassing EUNet?"
(i) For News? I don't see anything wrong with that (IHMO)
as long as they are registered with EUNet for mail.
Are there really many sites that want news but not email?
(ii) For Mail? Really messy. My national backbone site
ukc.ac.uk registers me as zzz in the world maps? They
wouldn't route mail if it cost them money and I refused to
pay. Why should they?
Someone in the states registers me as zzz.org and forwards my
mail? If most of my mail goes to the U.S. anyway I guess this
might be cheaper than using EUNet. It'll cost me the same to
mail an EUNet site in my home town as it will to mail someone
in Texas. Of course, the poor EUNet site will pay 3 times for
the mail I send him as well as for the mail he sends me. But
to him I just look like another U.S. site. It costs him the same
as if I were.
I don't know. It just doesn't seem quite right. Do I find
it unsettling because I think of domains in geographical terms?
Or because I'm so used to thinking `where is this going and what
will it cost?'. Maybe someone else can think through the
financial and technical implications.
BTW, it occurs to me that this already happens in the case of
large private networks. If I mail to (say) someone@xxx.att.com
the mail is routed to the U.S. but it might end up on a screen a
few miles away in Europe (in principle).
--
[This space rented Problems with uncomfortable Swinnerton-Dyers?
by EDUADS] Try the new K-TEL Rectal Irritant Extractor
--sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks) (07/07/89)
In article <588@odin.cs.hw.ac.uk> idc@cs.hw.ac.uk (Ian Crorie) writes: > >4. "What would be wrong with a U.S. site offering a European one a > trailblazer feed bypassing EUNet?" > > (i) For News? I don't see anything wrong with that (IHMO) > as long as they are registered with EUNet for mail. > Are there really many sites that want news but not email? > > (ii) For Mail? Really messy. My national backbone site > ukc.ac.uk registers me as zzz in the world maps? They > wouldn't route mail if it cost them money and I refused to > pay. Why should they? > You know this doesn't make much sense to me. unido says that they won't pass mail to someone who is getting their newsfeed from the USA. WHY NOT???? If site A is connected to ddsw1, then all US mail will go to ddsw1, unido is not even involved in this case. If site A wants to mail to someone connected to unido, then the person on unido who is the recipient will have to pay the delivery charge. This is the same as if someone in the USA sent mail to someone on unido. Why does unido want to blacklist them in this case? If someone on unido wants to mail to site A, then the person sending the mail will have to pay the normal charges to unido just as if he wanted to send mail over to the USA. Why does unido have a problem with this????? In other words, the traffic inside unido still gets paid for, and the traffic outside unido is none of unido's business. They just have to disable passing mail from outside unido to other sites outside unido. but since the sites that are outside unido already have another path for such mail, then there is no problem with this. Unido doesn't stop me or charge me to send to one of their customers, so why should they be concerned if someone next door to them geographically does the same thing? Why does unido insist on blocking *ALL* mail to/from such a site? Just block mail from outside unido to another place outside unido. that's what AT&T did here. You can still send to and from AT&T, but not pass thru it. -- John Sparks | {rutgers|uunet}!ukma!corpane!sparks | D.I.S.K. 24hrs 1200bps ||||||||||||||| sparks@corpane.UUCP | 502/968-5401 thru -5406 My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
wnp@attctc.DALLAS.TX.US (Wolf Paul) (07/09/89)
In a couple of articles, sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks) writes: >If there are places such as this one in Italy and the other one someone told us >about in the Netherlands that are receiving news from USA through a different >route than EUUG does, then why don't others ask if they could feed off of them >rather than off of unido? Surely a call to Italy would be cheaper than a call >to the USA. > >Or even better, why doesn't EUUG feed off of those sites? It would be much >cheaper than paying for transatlantic phone calls, eh? Because those who run EUnet feel that such feeds are too tentative and not sufficiently reliably -- they can be cut off at the whim of management. And because there are only a small number of such feeds, if this does indeed happen, there is not enough redundancy to prevent the network from collapsing. EUnet is dominated by Universities and Businesses, and to them this reliability issue is more important than the cost. To the small, private, hobbyist site, cost is more important than potential reliability problems. Ne'er the twain shall meet, at least until the recent decision by "unido" to permit small sites to obtain a "joint" feed and split the cost. >You know this doesn't make much sense to me. unido says that they won't pass >mail to someone who is getting their newsfeed from the USA. I believe that means they won't pass mail to someone who does not subscribe to their mail service -- regardless of where they get their news. >WHY NOT???? > >If site A is connected to ddsw1, then all US mail will go to ddsw1, unido is >not even involved in this case. > >If site A wants to mail to someone connected to unido, then the person on unido >who is the recipient will have to pay the delivery charge. This is the same as >if someone in the USA sent mail to someone on unido. Why does unido want to >blacklist them in this case? > >If someone on unido wants to mail to site A, then the person sending the mail >will have to pay the normal charges to unido just as if he wanted to send >mail over to the USA. Why does unido have a problem with this????? Because in unido's view, if these people routed their mail through unido in the first place, and paid for it, there would be a greater number of people to spread the overhead to, and the entire game would be cheaper for everyone. The problem with this is, that unless you have a sudden influx of new sites subscribing to unido all at once, and rates going down correspondingly, many of the private sites in Europe CANNOT AFFORD to join EUnet in hopes that someday their participation will result in lower rates. And aren't even inclined to as long as there is the suspicion (and confirmation of sort in recent postings by various unido admins) that unido is using part of the money for non-EUnet costs, and is thus charging them more than they should). -- Wolf N. Paul * 3387 Sam Rayburn Run * Carrollton TX 75007 * (214) 306-9101 UUCP: {texbell, attctc, dalsqnt}!dcs!wnp DOMAIN: wnp@attctc.dallas.tx.us or wnp%dcs@texbell.swbt.com NOTICE: As of July 3, 1989, "killer" has become "attctc".
ag@laura.UUCP (Anke Goos) (07/16/89)
Hi folks, there had been lots of articles in last weeks concerning unido in Germany. I can't even find back all of the arguments. Nevertheless I would like to clear some of the misunderstandings about EUnet in Germany. About my person: I'm responsible for information of German users in the postmaster team of those students who are running the backbone here and have to be paid by EUnet users. (At least for part of their efforts :-) >There had been the argument that Unido would demand some >sort of monopoly for the distribution of the international >Newsgroups inside Germany. This is certainly not true. Nor would we really be able to do this. What we *are* doing though is asking the EUnet participants not to further redistribute the international newsgroup we get via mcvax without letting participate the third-party in the costs all EUnet members have to carry for the international News. This is in the intention of "The more participate, the cheaper it will be for the individual site". Our recent cuts in tariffs and costs for international mail and news proves that this is the way to continue. >Why is the Unido backbone still at the University if this >doesn't support EUnet activities? In fact, our department of computer science gives us some gentle pushes to buy a machine for the postmaster activities (like replying mail, writing documentation, testing software, etc.) at the cost of those EUnet people who really get our support. I can really understand this, (the more as I see and suffer from the load average of this very machine :-(( now. The *real* support from the university is in the infrastructure of hardware and people the university provides easily: For example the laserprinter and copy-service for documentation, the accounting-department for charging of costs, part of the secretary of our department, space for PD software, etc. Up to now these cost-worthy advantages for the EUnet users balance out the restrictions by university bureaucracy. Nevertheless there had been the idea around since last year to get indepedant of the university and form a non-profit organization like UUnet or the Danish backbone in the long run. >Why does Unido not open their figures? Personally I would prefer to show a much better transparency than we are (not) giving now. One problem is that our project is tied into the bureaucracy of a university which wouldn't like to open their accounts. Note that university departments in Germany normally are *not supposed* to do what we are doing here. This probably is also one reason, why the German EUnet suffers a severe lack of secondary-feeders for the news. It would cost those universities who already get teh news some energy and fight against rules to officially let a company use the modem ports of a university. >Domain .de open for Non-Eunet sites? Yes. The international top-level domain .de is also open for Non-EUnet sites. As always, a registration is needed to have someone at hand for charging any costs which may easily occur through transatlantic data. The sites only have to be a member of one of the official networks in our country. (Note that this is a rule laid on the Europeans by the American authorities, it's not our idea). That means applying the X.400 network DFN (which you may well find under dbp.de), German EARN (which probably will not show any .de-address until migration to X.400), the small German CSnet, or EUnet. You think there has to be a trap here? Sure: Unido only registers (paying) EUnet participants. We don't want to give any active service to a Non-EUnet site from Germany, as this would suck of energy and money for EUnet members who are participating in the costs. Imagine what would happen if we would support organizations by using the EUnet lines which are not participating in the overall costs: A long row of those sites from here to Munich to Hambourg to Berlin to .... In fact this row is already existing somehow under the name of so-called Subnet, but read further. >Blacklisting of Non-EUnet sites? This certainly is a black chapter. There is no blacklisting of Non-EUnet-sites here at this time. But you may have heard the story about those Italian subnet-sites who had used a stolen NUI for their data transfer with US. In affect these have not been authorized anymore to send their mail via Unido. Besides there had been the idea around some weeks ago not to support any more Subnet-e-mail via Unido until this group of people would come up with charging the economic tariffs which had been found for them by both parties last year. In fact the Subnet seems to have had problems with German bureaucracy of founding an organization for half a year :-) until some days ago. >There had been the accusation that "little boys pay rates for >big boys" here? This is totally true if an individual person would have to subscribe to our EUnet services which only apply for a whole organization. Originally it has been EUUG policy only to accept organizations as members. Also no-one would have thought in the early 80ies that an individual might afford a (Unix) machine for his own mail-access. Times have changed now. Nevertheless our university bureaucracy still isn't able to charge individuals for an mail-access nor do we want to have our ports bursting by a lot of machines calling. Instead the demand of individuals should better be served in a decentralised and cheaper way for the EUnet users: Via secondary-feeders, public bulletin boards and the unformal way the subnet is developing. Everything under condition that these participate for a fair price in the overall costs for EUnet! There had been a common agreement with the subnet people about feasible contributions for this: 10 DM/~4,5$ per month/personal site for registration + mail support or 30 DM/~18$ " + participating in the whole of the news plus volume-based tariffs for their international mail. >What the hell is unido doing with trailblazer if not using them for reducing the costs? Using the trailblazer to reduce costs by exchanging data with any other national backbone or EUnet site! (Note that the star topology of EUnet only applies for the high volumes of news, not for mail. Also note that X.25 is much more used in Europe for long-distance calls than in US. Unfortunately there aren't such a lot of German sites at this time using high-speed modems. Every German who is interested to participate in the offical "field experiment" of the German PTT for modified trailblazer on German telephone lines may well ask me for the address of the responsible. Anyway I definetely know that they want to legalize these modems up to next year. But although trailblazer are a way to reduce costs, our (already ordered) leased line to mcvax would reduce costs for EUnet users even much and offer other possibilities than a telephone line would do. >Why does Unido not take donations? We would like to take hardware, but there aren't that much companies volunteering :-( ! Anyone out there sponsoring our postmaster-machine, for work of 7 people at the same time, supporting iso-migration and other features we would be pleased to tell ? No wonder, that only two of 19 national EUnet backbone sites are situated at companies! The rest is running at universities or research institutions. Nor had there been any company offering a "reliable" source for an international news feed. At the same time, EUnet and unido try to stay as self-financing as possible to avoid any economic dependancy! There had been a lot of energy and time spent on a EUnet project by EUUG to apply for subsidies at the European commission for the European Unix network. Although Unix is adopted as the standard for a lot of European governments, it seems that UUCP is not the religion you have to have there! So, it will always be the users who have to pay the high price for telecommunication at this side of the pond! I know that I may still not answering all of your questions. Please *accept* that conditions in Europe are different from US, for good reasons causing a different network from Usenet! If you have any question about sending e-mail into Germany drop a mail to postmaster@unido.uucp, as this is the job we are caring about. >>>Anke <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< Anke Goos - responsible for information of the end-user at the German EUnet-Backbone Domain ag@informatik.uni-dortmund.de University of Dortmund - IRB Internet: Anke@germany.eu.net 4600 Dortmund 50 UUCP ag@unido.uucp P.O.Box 500 500 Bang ...!uunet!unido!ag Tel +49 231 755 2444 Bitnet ag@unido.bitnet >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will.
dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi) (07/16/89)
In article <1477@laura.UUCP> ag@laura.UUCP (Anke Goos) writes: >What we *are* doing though is asking the EUnet participants >not to further redistribute the international newsgroup we get >via mcvax without letting participate the third-party in the >costs all EUnet members have to carry for the international >News. >This is in the intention of "The more participate, the >cheaper it will be for the individual site". By imposing conditions on others you are probably making it harder for more sites to share the costs. What you should be doing is charging enough to cover your costs, and allowing your news subscribers to freely redistribute news. This will mean that (a) you will have to charge more, because you will get income only from those who directly get news from you, but (b) your direct subscribers will be able to actively solicit new sites to share *their* costs. This will allow other sites to get a newsfeed from you and then act as backbone sites and feed many other intermediate or leaf nodes. Such a hierarchical structure minimizes costs. Your current policy does not encourage its formation. Right now, when a site finds another and feeds news to it, its costs do not get halved. Instead they will decrease by a very small fraction (and probably not immediately). So there is very little incentive for people to feed news to others. You will get new sites but very slowly. You are taking the position that there is a difference between the US and Europe and you are constrained by that difference. In fact there is a difference between the US and Europe and you are *part* of that difference. -- Rahul Dhesi <dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> UUCP: ...!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi
karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) (07/18/89)
In article <1477@laura.UUCP> ag@laura.UUCP (Anke Goos) writes: > Hi folks, > >there had been lots of articles in last weeks concerning >unido in Germany. I can't even find back all of the arguments. >Nevertheless I would like to clear some of the misunderstandings >about EUnet in Germany. Good... > >There had been the argument that Unido would demand some > >sort of monopoly for the distribution of the international > >Newsgroups inside Germany. > >This is certainly not true. Nor would we really be able to do this. >What we *are* doing though is asking the EUnet participants >not to further redistribute the international newsgroup we get >via mcvax without letting participate the third-party in the >costs all EUnet members have to carry for the international >News. Do you apply pressure, or discontinue subscriptions for those who do decide to redistribute the newsgroups against your wishes? That is, you do ASK people to cooperate, or do you effectively put a gun to their head and say "you will NOT do this under penalty of having your feed shot in the head...." >This is in the intention of "The more participate, the >cheaper it will be for the individual site". Our recent cuts in >tariffs and costs for international mail and news proves that >this is the way to continue. It proves nothing. A free(er) market may have cut costs more by now than you have. Absent a full public accounting of your unido income and direct expenses there is no way to tell. >Nevertheless there had been the idea around since last year to get >indepedant of the university and form a non-profit organization >like UUnet or the Danish backbone in the long run. Which might be a good idea. > >Domain .de open for Non-Eunet sites? > >Yes. The international top-level domain .de is also open for >Non-EUnet sites. As always, a registration is needed to have >someone at hand for charging any costs which may easily occur >through transatlantic data. The sites only have to be >a member of one of the official networks in our country. (Note that >this is a rule laid on the Europeans by the American >authorities, it's not our idea). That means applying the X.400 >network DFN (which you may well find under dbp.de), German >EARN (which probably will not show any .de-address until >migration to X.400), the small German CSnet, or EUnet. (It's a rule laid on you by the American authorities?) Which authority(s) are involved here? Name 'em. From my understanding you only need a MX record to have a valid domain connection if you are passing email via uucp. That is, if you would agree, someone could register as an authority an "MX" record for "free.de"; hosts would be named things like "box.free.de"; the MX would point to the appropriate place for "free.de" sites. The mail would never touch your machine. Why would anyone need anything other than the physical connectivity to do something like this? >You think there has to be a trap here? Sure: Unido only >registers (paying) EUnet participants. We don't want to give >any active service to a Non-EUnet site from Germany, as this would >suck of energy and money for EUnet members who are participating >in the costs. Right. Unido only allows people to use the ".de" if they pay unido. I knew there was a catch somewhere. > >Blacklisting of Non-EUnet sites? > >This certainly is a black chapter. There is no blacklisting of >Non-EUnet-sites here at this time. But you may have heard the story >about those Italian subnet-sites who had used a stolen NUI for >their data transfer with US. In affect these have not been authorized >anymore to send their mail via Unido. Ok, what if someone in Germany, not registered with unido, sends one of the unido-listed sites email. It goes to the US (for example), and then back via MCVAX to unido. Do you bounce it? Yes or no answer required; no ifs or buts. If the answer is YES, you do bounce it, then you ARE blacklisting sites. If the answer is NO, then you are not. The same holds true if a unido-listed site sends mail to one of the "other" sites. If you prevent the unido-listed site from emailing to the non-listed site, you are blacklisting the site(s) involved outside of your clique. >Instead the demand of individuals should better be served in a >decentralised and cheaper way for the EUnet users: >Via secondary-feeders, public bulletin boards >and the unformal way the subnet is developing. Everything under >condition that these participate for a fair price in the overall >costs for EUnet! There had been a common agreement with the >subnet people about feasible contributions for this: But why should they pay you if they do not use your resources? These people are using their own connections to the US, and only ask that you not interrupt their mail traffic to and from your "blessed" sites. Email to and from these is no different than mail going to and from the USA. Why the complaint? >I know that I may still not answering all of your questions. >Please *accept* that conditions in Europe are different from US, >for good reasons causing a different network from Usenet! But are they? The clamoring for a different organization than you are providing shows that the people who want to use the net are dissatisfied with your organization. That they want change. That they are willing to PAY for that change. They aren't willing to pour money into what they perceive as a black hole with no accountability. For Unido to decide that traffic is "persona non grata" just because mail comes from a different route (ie: via the US) is equivalent to everyone in the US saying "Screw Unido, we will bounce all mail passing through unido -- and cut off Germany." -- Karl Denninger (karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM, <well-connected>!ddsw1!karl) Public Access Data Line: [+1 312 566-8911], Voice: [+1 312 566-8910] Macro Computer Solutions, Inc. "Quality Solutions at a Fair Price"
philip@coms.axis.fr (Philip Peake) (07/18/89)
In article <8229@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>, dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi) writes: > > What you should be doing is .... In place of this read "What *I* think you should be doing ..." You have the right to your opinion - but you being 4500 miles from Germany, and knowing NOTHING of the European context, I don't give much for your opinion. > allowing your news subscribers to freely redistribute news. This will > mean that (a) you will have to charge more, because you will get income > only from those who directly get news from you, but (b) your direct > subscribers will be able to actively solicit new sites to share *their* > costs. You have NOT followed the explanations. One more time ... EUnet is the network of the EUUG. We are (if you like) a club of people who import out news, sharing costs to reduce the cost for all. PLEASE DON'T TELL US THAT WE HAVE TO GIVE MONEY TO OTHER PEOPLE. Because giving away free news feeds is exactly that. They are free to get their own news feeds, and set up their own networks - but we WILL NOT subsidise them. If you want to implement your ideas then go ahead, but you have absolutely no right whatsoever to impose your views on us.
root@infoac.rmi.de (Operator) (07/18/89)
dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi) writes: >Right now, when a site finds another and feeds news to it, its costs do >not get halved. Instead they will decrease by a very small fraction >(and probably not immediately). So there is very little incentive for >people to feed news to others. You will get new sites but very >slowly. Right now I found the new fees of unido and they honor the re- distribution of newa: you get a discount of 25% per 4 host fed by you. So they have new ideas. But another problem just is: We supply redistribution, but the interest is low. Everybody has to pay for X.25 or telephone and always long distance calls. So it seems to be the idea of those people: If I have to pay long distance I could rather poll unido itself ... (See: I pay abt DM 300/month ($150.-) to unido and abt DM 3000 ($1500.-) to the Bundespost for the lines. So what is the discussion about? 50.000.000 Bytes of News is a high Volume for X25 - and you pay the Volume, not the time...) Rupert -- *********************************************************** My opinion may be the opinion of my company. uucp: rmohr@infoac.rmi.de FAX: 49 241 3 28 22 ***********************************************************
dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi) (07/19/89)
In article <1989Jul18.121524.15171@coms.axis.fr> philip@coms.axis.fr (Philip Peake) writes: >PLEASE DON'T TELL US THAT WE HAVE TO GIVE MONEY TO OTHER PEOPLE. >Because giving away free news feeds is exactly that. > >They are free to get their own news feeds, and set up their own >networks - but we WILL NOT subsidise them. Well, I re-read what I wrote, and I find that my suggestion was to recover full costs for providing newsfeeds from those that directly get news from unido. I fail to see how that constitutes giving away free newsfeeds, or subsidizing others. -- Rahul Dhesi <dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> UUCP: ...!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi
dave@ecrcvax.UUCP (Dave Morton) (07/19/89)
>We supply redistribution, but the interest is low. Everybody has to pay >for X.25 or telephone and always long distance calls. So it seems >to be the idea of those people: If I have to pay long distance I >could rather poll unido itself ... Correct - this is how it is. People in the USA dont seem to realise that an X.25 call here in Germany costs the same regardless of distance. Also note that shipping News using currently approved modems (2400 baud) within Germany would work out much more expensive that X.25, especially from unido to Munich (~600 km = long distance call). I cant possibly imagine anyone being dumb enough to ship > 60MB News per month across the pond without cost sharing and regardless of modem or X.25. Across the pond = very long distance call = big money ! >(See: I pay abt DM 300/month ($150.-) to unido and abt DM 3000 ($1500.-) >to the Bundespost for the lines. So what is the discussion about? >50.000.000 Bytes of News is a high Volume for X25 - and you pay the >Volume, not the time...) Also correct, and note this has been pointed out before, unido is not the limiting factor by far. So why *are* we still discussing this issue ?
peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (07/19/89)
Rahul Dhesi suggested an arrangement that would use market forces to encourage a more even mixture of feeds... In article <1989Jul18.121524.15171@coms.axis.fr>, philip@coms.axis.fr (Philip Peake) writes: > PLEASE DON'T TELL US THAT WE HAVE TO GIVE MONEY TO OTHER PEOPLE. > Because giving away free news feeds is exactly that. Stop. Go back and read what Rahul suggested. He didn't say *anything* about giving away free feeds. He recommended: a) Sell feeds at some rate X. This would be adjusted so you make the necessary profit. Divide costs by feeds, and charge your *direct* feeds that amount. b) Allow the people you feed to sell their feeds at any rate they like. Dividing their costs by #feeds, for example, or whatever. You don't care... you get paid. If they charge too much people can always get feeds from you. c) Sit back and watch a richly-connected network grow thanks to the invisible hand of market forces. > If you want to implement your ideas then go ahead, but you have absolutely > no right whatsoever to impose your views on us. And no ability. Perhaps you should consider what "impose" means. What Rahul was doing is described as "making a suggestion". Do you have a problem with that? -- Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Business: peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. | "A char, a short int, and Personal: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com. `-_-' | an int bit-field were walking Quote: Have you hugged your wolf today? 'U` | through the forest..."
philip@coms.axis.fr (Philip Peake) (07/20/89)
In article <8276@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>, dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi) writes: > In article <1989Jul18.121524.15171@coms.axis.fr> philip@coms.axis.fr (Philip > Peake) writes: > >PLEASE DON'T TELL US THAT WE HAVE TO GIVE MONEY TO OTHER PEOPLE. > >Because giving away free news feeds is exactly that. > > > >They are free to get their own news feeds, and set up their own > >networks - but we WILL NOT subsidise them. > > Well, I re-read what I wrote, and I find that my suggestion was to > recover full costs for providing newsfeeds from those that directly get > news from unido. > > I fail to see how that constitutes giving away free newsfeeds, or > subsidizing others. Ok, expressed as simply as I can express it: We, us, EUnet members can be considered as a group of people who have clubbed together to spread the exhorbitant telecoms costs for news between us. Ok so far ? Now, along come other people, who say "We don't want to join your club, we don't want to contribute to your costs - we just insist that you give us all this lovely news that you have paid the transport costs for." Now, they CAN say that they consider our partitioning of the costs as being unfair - and they CAN propose other solutions. But they can't INSIST that we adopt them - if they don't like it, and they think that there is a better/cheaper way, then fine - let them go ahead and do it themselves. All I will say about that is that EUnet has been going for about 10 years now, and we have LOTS of experience of what does and what doesn't work. Many people have tried to do it their way, and none of them have suceeded. What you seemed to be saying was something like; it doesn't cost you anything to actually give away a news feed to these people. This man or may not be true - I insist that it would cost something, if only the extra CUP cycles and disk space - buts lets be generous, and presume that we had both to spare (which ISN'T the case ..) Now, why should I continue to pay EUnet fees, when I can get a free feed from these new sites ? Why should anyone ? So you would end up with a backbone site with no paying connections. they can't afford to run that, so it all breaks. It would simply destroy the existing system - and as I said above, experience has show that nothing else works. We are not about to destroy our own system - let market forces and competition do it - as people keep saying! Let these people set up their own free news scheme, and EUnet will just go away (actually, it will just take a free feed ...) Is this clear ? Can you see where the problem lies ? Philip
gdelong@cvman.prime.com (Gary Delong) (07/21/89)
In article <8276@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>, dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi) writes: > In article <1989Jul18.121524.15171@coms.axis.fr> philip@coms.axis.fr (Philip > Peake) writes: > >PLEASE DON'T TELL US THAT WE HAVE TO GIVE MONEY TO OTHER PEOPLE. > >Because giving away free news feeds is exactly that. > > > >They are free to get their own news feeds, and set up their own > >networks - but we WILL NOT subsidise them. > > Well, I re-read what I wrote, and I find that my suggestion was to > recover full costs for providing newsfeeds from those that directly get > news from unido. Rahul, I think your still missing what your being told. It's not your system, it's their's. They have the right to do exactly as they wish with their assests, just as you have the right to chose how you use your assets. To put it bluntly, I would not be so kind in my responses to you if you tried to tell me how I should run the network/systems I administer. Owners of systems do not need "your" permission to do anything that does not affect a service you are paying them for. And most would not welcome your intrusions into things that are none of your business. This entire discussion upsets me (maybe you couldn't tell 8-) ). I keep seeing those with nothing at stake trying to tell those who have put forth the money and effort to accomplish something how they could have done it so much better if only.... Well, I'll listen to your "if onlys" when your investment in my network gives you some right to criticize, or when you show me something "you" have built that works better. Apologies to the rest of the net for the tone of this posting, but I finally just had to say it. -- _____ / \ / Gary A. Delong, N1BIP "I am the NRA." gdelong@cvman.prime.com | \ / COMPUTERVISION Division {sun|linus}!cvbnet!gdelong \____\/ Prime Computer, Inc. (603) 622-1260 x 261
greenber@utoday.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg) (07/21/89)
(It sorta sounds like EUNet is simply a European version of UUNET....) -- Ross M. Greenberg UNIX TODAY! 594 Third Avenue New York New York 10016 Review Editor Voice:(212)-889-6431 BBS:(212)-889-6438 uunet!utoday!greenber BIX: greenber MCI: greenber CIS: 72461,3212
mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst) (07/22/89)
In article <1989Jul20.102927.26127@coms.axis.fr>, philip@coms.axis.fr (Philip Peake) writes: >Ok, expressed as simply as I can express it: > >We, us, EUnet members can be considered as a group of people who have >clubbed together to spread the exhorbitant telecoms costs for news between >us. > >Ok so far ? > >Now, along come other people, who say "We don't want to join your club, >we don't want to contribute to your costs - we just insist that you give >us all this lovely news that you have paid the transport costs for." WRONG. Here is what Rahul said, "as simply as I can express it": Let's say that it costs $10,000/month to ship the full news distribution across the pond to unido. Let's also say that you have 10 sites that feed directly off unido. You should charge each of those 10 sites $1,000/month for their newsfeeds. Now, let's say that site A, which gets its feed off unido, can get 9 other sites to feed off it. That means that site A can charge each of those 9 sites $100/month, and it pays $100/month. Site A1, who gets a feed off site A and pays $100/month for this, feeds three other sites. This means that those three other sites only have to pay $25/month, with site A1 also chipping in $25/month towards the $100/month that it owes site A. So, at the end of every month, site A owes unido $1,000 for their newsfeed. However, since site A is feeding 9 other sites and charging each of them $100 for their feed; this means that site A only has to come up with another $100 to make $1,000. And, since site A1 is charging three other sites $25/month for their feeds, that means that site A1 only has to come up with another $25 to make the $100 that it owes site A. unido doesn't have to know anything about this, other than the routing info to get the mail where it's going. unido only knows that it gets $10,000 every month to subsidize their costs. They don't know that there are some sites, three levels down, that only pay $25/month for news; they don't have to. They handle collection from the top-level sites that they feed, in turn, the top-level sites handle collection from the second-level sites that they feed, and so on. This rate structure makes it very cheap to get news on your personal machine if you are four or five steps down the ladder: You could end up paying only about $5 or so a month for a full newsfeed, or you might even get it for free! -- Marc Unangst UUCP smart : mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us UUCP dumb : ...!uunet!sharkey!mudos!mju UUCP dumb alt.: ...!{ames,rutgers}!mailrus!clip!mudos!mju Internet : mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us
udo@watzman.UUCP (Udo Klimaschewski) (07/22/89)
Hello to all ...
From philip@coms.axis.fr (Philip Peake):
] You have the right to your opinion - but you being 4500 miles from
] Germany, and knowing NOTHING of the European context, I don't give
] much for your opinion.
This is for sure not a very good way to handle others opinions.
(But an easy way)
] One more time ...
Until even the last luser at the end of the last site accepts it?
] PLEASE DON'T TELL US THAT WE HAVE TO GIVE MONEY TO OTHER PEOPLE.
] Because giving away free news feeds is exactly that.
Maybe disabling your caps-lock will result in more convincing arguments ;-)
] They are free to get their own news feeds, and set up their own
] networks - but we WILL NOT subsidise them.
Yeah! That hits the spot! Exactly the way, EuNet handles arguments,
discussions and Network-philosophy.
But sorry, I dunno if you are one of the ,,representativs'' of EuNet,
people at unido and mcvax are much more open for discussions on that
toppic and sometimes they even get convinced by arguments.
] If you want to implement your ideas then go ahead, but you have absolutely
] no right whatsoever to impose your views on us.
So, set up your own one-man-network and be happy.
If everyone would have the same idea of the net, it would not exist for
sure. Well, take a look over there just behind uunet, the news and mail
are distributed in the way, we just suggest.
So, why does EuNet not cut off from uunet? Whole Usenet is is working
just the way, you want to forbid.
C'mon, we should work for the net, not against it. I have surely
understood all arguments, discussing them for more than a year.
Alot of things, as I take a look to unido, have changed, just because
of the need to have some sort of change.
It is surely true, more people - less fees. But this is a theoretical
model, not prooved to enforce a growth of the net here in europe.
As an administrator of an Eunet-site, also an active sub-member, I
just want to help people, who simply haven't got the money, participating
on the net.
Surely, this will result in higher fees for me, but I think it's worth it.
If there is no way to work with EuNet *together*, it wont be a mistake
of us (sub).
I won't drop one single tear when I cut off from EuNet, but for sure
will have a better feeling when working on our own net, which works
exactly like usenet. Maybe, in a few months, even you will join us.
I hope to get an active member!
Regards
Udo
--
Udo Klimaschewski [udo@watzman.UUCP] [...uunet!mcvax!unido!watzman!udo]
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Gebt mir ein Loch und begrabt mich. [Frei nach Fisher Z]peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (07/22/89)
In article <917@utoday.UUCP>, greenber@utoday.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg) writes: > (It sorta sounds like EUNet is simply a European version of UUNET....) This is a joke, right? I mean, UUNET doesn't expect anyone to pay extra because they're getting a feed from us that we got from UUNET. -- Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Business: peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. | "A char, a short int, and Personal: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com. `-_-' | an int bit-field were walking Quote: Have you hugged your wolf today? 'U` | through the forest..."
karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) (07/22/89)
In article <917@utoday.UUCP> greenber@.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg) writes: >(It sorta sounds like EUNet is simply a European version of UUNET....) Not quite: I have received a very disturbing piece of email. I'm waiting for permission to publish it here -- the mail was from a German _commercial_ site, and stated (loosely): "We can't get a feed from uunet -- they won't accept our connection. We have tried for a direct link, and were told no." I requested more details and permission to post the e-letter. Haven't received a reply yet. If this is true then uunet is hardly what one would consider a "common carrier" of netnews. Note that this report is at present UNVERIFIED. I will post more details if and when I receive a reply to my letter asking permission to post the email I received. Comments from the uunet people? -- Karl Denninger (karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM, <well-connected>!ddsw1!karl) Public Access Data Line: [+1 312 566-8911], Voice: [+1 312 566-8910] Macro Computer Solutions, Inc. "Quality Solutions at a Fair Price"
wayne@dsndata.uucp (Wayne Schlitt) (07/23/89)
In article <917@utoday.UUCP> greenber@utoday.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg) writes: > (It sorta sounds like EUNet is simply a European version of UUNET....) yes, with one _major_ difference. uunet doesnt care if you redistribute your news, eunet does. -wayne
seindal@skinfaxe.diku.dk (Rene' Seindal) (07/24/89)
wayne@dsndata.uucp (Wayne Schlitt) writes: > In article <917@utoday.UUCP> greenber@utoday.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg) writes: > > (It sorta sounds like EUNet is simply a European version of UUNET....) > yes, with one _major_ difference. uunet doesnt care if you > redistribute your news, eunet does. Apparently, some things just don't get through, across the pond. First, EUUG is a closed society of Unix users, and EUnet is a service to the members. This means it you are not a member of the EUUG, you cannot use EUnet. This is why some people refer to it as a club. Second, at least in some european countries, the PTTs hold a monopoly on datacommunication (they own the lines, and are in turn owned by the state), and will not tolerate commercial third party traffic of substantial volume. I am not an expert on these things, but do know that if the Danish part on EUnet where to allow non-EUUG members on the net, the PTT could easily put us out of business. Not only could they, but they probably would too. Thus, at least in Denmark, EUnet will have to stay a member service only. It is my impression that there are similar conditions in most of the other member-nations of EUUG. Because the PTTs will not allow non EUUG members on EUnet, news cannot be redistributed freely. It can only be redistributed to other EUUG members. EUner cannot allow the members to redistribute news freely to non-members, because the PTTs will not allow EUnet to. It is not in our hands. As to pricing, again the EUnet is a service to EUUG members, which can be considered a club. The rule, that all sites on EUnet share the costs equally, have been decided in a democratic fashion within the EUUG. The price policy is therefore chosen indirectly by the members of EUUG, and, I think, should not be questioned by outsides. It is none of their business. The situation here in Europe is very different fron the situation in the US. Please don't think it is the same. Those of you who do are making a big mistake. As I said before, I am not an expert on these political issues, and I might have made some mistakes in the above description of the European situation. If I have so, please correct me. I hope this discription of the conditions EUnet work under can help you understand why EUnet is not like USENET and why EUnet is not like UUNET. Eunet are subject to other rules and restrictions than the networks in the US, and is quite naturally different. Please try to understand this. Rene' Seindal (seindal@diku.dk).
woerz%isaak@isaak.uucp (Dieter Woerz) (07/25/89)
In article <5084@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: > ... > a) Sell feeds at some rate X. This would be adjusted so > you make the necessary profit. Divide costs by feeds, > and charge your *direct* feeds that amount. That 's the first problem in my eyes. For this arrangement you have to have a sufficient large amount of feeds or they must have some feeds already, or the "direct" feeds have to pay very high prices for the feed. The second will stop many connections from being established in the first time, so the costs will remain high. > b) Allow the people you feed to sell their feeds at any > rate they like. Dividing their costs by #feeds, for > example, or whatever. You don't care... you get paid. > If they charge too much people can always get feeds > from you. This is a second problem over here. If I remember correctly, most or nearly most of the news reading sites are Universities and public research organizations. Both these institutions have problems "reselling" secondary news feeds to commercial or personal sites and billing them, I think, because of the kind of contracts you have to have with the receiving sites. And you can't get money from someone without a contract with the person (difficult for Universities to deal with, as someone said in an earlier posting) or company. I think that's why unido introduced the tariff reduction, so that for every 5 fed and paying (unido) sites, you get a reduction of you news bills of 25%. So Universities can refeed without having to hassle with contracts and their accounting department. > c) Sit back and watch a richly-connected network grow > thanks to the invisible hand of market forces. Perhaps some of you got now a better understanding, why there is no such "richly-connected" network as in the states. > ... An other problem may lay in the fact, that EUnet (or dnet) is not too well known here. I think, that in most Universities here, most students are not allowed to read or post mail and news, because the cpu-time is billed to the project they 're working on. For this reason, maybe they even don't know about mail and news and don't request a connection to news in their company after having finished studying. Dieter Woerz ISA GmbH, Azenbergstr. 35 D-7000 Stuttgart-1 W-Germany UUCP: {pyramid!iaoobel,uunet!unido}!isaak!woerz BITNET/EARN: woerz@ds0iff5
greenber@utoday.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg) (07/25/89)
In article <5198@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >In article <917@utoday.UUCP>, greenber@utoday.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg) writes: >> (It sorta sounds like EUNet is simply a European version of UUNET....) > >This is a joke, right? I mean, UUNET doesn't expect anyone to pay extra because >they're getting a feed from us that we got from UUNET. >-- Nope. It sounds to me that EUNet is taking the cost of getting articles, which includes things (for them) like telecommunications charges on a per packet basis, and spreading it to their members. Trying to provide a service and keep the cost down. Is anybody making a profit from EUNet, I wonder? -- Ross M. Greenberg UNIX TODAY! 594 Third Avenue New York New York 10016 Review Editor Voice:(212)-889-6431 BBS:(212)-889-6438 uunet!utoday!greenber BIX: greenber MCI: greenber CIS: 72461,3212
greenber@utoday.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg) (07/25/89)
In article <WAYNE.89Jul23094319@dsndata.uucp> wayne@dsndata.uucp (Wayne Schlitt) writes: > >In article <917@utoday.UUCP> greenber@utoday.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg) writes: >> (It sorta sounds like EUNet is simply a European version of UUNET....) > >yes, with one _major_ difference. uunet doesnt care if you >redistribute your news, eunet does. That doesn;t sound all that bad, really: nobody forces somebody to join EUNet. There is a limited market there. Given a site paying EUNet's fees (which don;t seem out of line to me), can't you consider Johann Sebastian Netfeed taking his feed, charging ten leaf nodes he feeds, and leaving EUNet holding the expensive bag? I would think that, eventually, when EUNet becomes the equivalent of UUNET, that restriction will drop. I wonder whether or not UUNET would have been so popular if ihnp4 and the rest of 'em opted to stay instead of go away? Our fees to UUNET are quite reasonable for the service we get. The reason the fees are so low? Because everybody, for the most part, goes to UUNET for the best feed. The leaves we all feed may, eventually, go direct to UUNET one day -- provided the service is still there. EUNet seems, to me, to be trying to survive. Can you get a free feed from US commercial sites? -- Ross M. Greenberg UNIX TODAY! 594 Third Avenue New York New York 10016 Review Editor Voice:(212)-889-6431 BBS:(212)-889-6438 uunet!utoday!greenber BIX: greenber MCI: greenber CIS: 72461,3212
cuccia@yak.sybase.com (Nick Cuccia) (07/25/89)
In article <4693@freja.diku.dk> seindal@skinfaxe.diku.dk (Rene' Seindal) writes: >Apparently, some things just don't get through, across the pond. I think that much of this is because of the inflammatory choice of words used by posters on your side of the pond. Content tends to get buried under the fluff (to use a polite word... ;-). >First, EUUG is a closed society of Unix users, and EUnet is a service to the >members. This means it you are not a member of the EUUG, you cannot use >EUnet. This is why some people refer to it as a club. Okay, what do you mean by closed? Is EUUG limited to big vendors? Does it have a ceiling on the total membership? Or is it "closed" in the sense of Usenix or /usr/group (Uniforum for the non-Unix-literate :-(), that only those who can dish up the US$40/yr can be members? If the latter is true, then it isn't really "closed." What are the criteria for becoming a EUUG member? (Sorry, this is peripheral, but a) I'm curious, and b) it seems to have some bearing on other things said here). >[PTT monopoly => limited commercial 3rd party traffic,] >[=> no non-EUUG-affiliated sites on EUNet in Denmark (and possibly)] >[other European countries.] The one thing that I do understand about the EEC is that you have eight or so separate sovereign nations in an area smaller than that of the US west of the Mississippi (heck, a number of Luxembourgs could fit within the Los Angeles city limits, and San Bernardino County (in southern California) is roughly the size of the Netherlands, Belgium, or Denmark). That means that there are at least eight PTTs (or, in the case of the UK, Government- appointed Private Carriers (British Telecom)) to deal with. Granted this, I'd give your comments the credence they deserve only in the case of countries whose PTTs have similar policies to yours. This does not, however, mean that having a pyramid-based distribution (with each layer recovering the costs (not necessarily profiting) from the layer below) isn't a reasonable thing to do where it can be applied. If unido is allowed to accept payment (for cost recovery or for profit) for feeds (whether they are to EUUG- or non-EUUG-member sites), why can't (and shouldn't) those downstream sites be able to do the same for sites downstream from them? What's wrong with a tree, rather than a brush (one root, two levels including the root, and lots of branches) net structure, in the case of unido? Curious, --Nick =============================================================================== Some days, you just can't get rid of a bomb...--Batman Nick Cuccia System Admin/Postmaster, Sybase, Incorporated cuccia@sybase.com 6475 Christie Av. Emeryville, CA 94608 {sun,lll-tis,pyramid,pacbell}!sybase!cuccia +1 415 596-3500 ===============================================================================
seindal@skinfaxe.diku.dk (Rene' Seindal) (07/25/89)
greenber@utoday.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg) writes: > Is anybody making a profit from EUNet, I wonder? EUnet is a service to the members of EUUG. EUUG has not started EUnet to make money, but to provide the members with a service they currently cannot get somewhere else. EUUG is a Unix-system User's group, and not a company, so there is no profit from having EUnet. Rene' Seindal (seindal@diku.dk).
storm@texas.dk (Kim F. Storm) (07/26/89)
It seems that the basic disagreement is whether allowing redistribution of news will actually cost the backbone anything. Using the calculations previously posted here (not really related to the real costs and prices), we get the following table ideally showing that everybody get practically free news: Cost to Number of Number of Own Cost get news sub sites sites (ideal) Backbone: 10,000 10 1 0 1st level: 1,000 10 10 0 2nd level: 100 5 100 0 3rd level: 20 4 500 0 4th level: 5 -- 2000 5 5th level: 0 (not worth the troubles to charge them). And of course a site which does not like to have the troubles finding 5-10 sites to feed, can just pay the full charge to its news provider. Its a free world, right? So using this scheme, we would have more than 2500 sites getting news for $5 or less. The big question ($10,000 :-) is how you manage to persuade a site to sign up as 1st or even 2nd level, if it can find somebody who is willing to feed it on the 3rd or 4th level? If it signs up as a 1st level site, it will have to find 10 new sites willing to pay $100 for a news feed from them. Until then, the price for their news feed is $1,000! So instead we may end up with a less balanced hierarchy where the sites paying to the backbone (1st level sites), and their subsites really are subsidicing the rest of the news sites (which may or may not be ok depending on you point of view). Cost to Number of Number of Own Cost get news sub sites sites (real) Backbone: 10,000 3 1 0 1st level: 3,333 5 3 833 2nd level: 500 3 15 200 3rd level: 100 5 45 0 4th level: 20 10 225 0 5th level: 2 -- 2225 And once you have this situation, who is going to change from a lower to a higher level to equal out the costs? There is no organization behind this - remember? Would you ever expect a new site to connect directly to the backbone? And what if a 1st level site goes out of business (because it found itself a free 4th level feed)? Who will then pay 1/3 of the backbone costs? Will the net survive? Of course it will! The backbone just have to find a free 4th level feed as well :-) From a commercial point of view, news is very strange: It is something which is very expensive to get in the first place (from the US to Europe), but once you got it you can duplicate it indefinitely at no cost. Since the initial cost has to be payed somehow (unless you have a rich uncle (Sam?) paying it for you), what better way to do this is there than to say that everybody who get a copy should pay an equal share of the initial costs? Why is this so difficult to understand? Is it unfair? To whom? (Notice that not a single word has been said about EUnet or unido sofar :-) Unfortunately, the rest of this posting will )-: ) But I still does not understand what all the fuzz is about - especially not in Germany: Even the highest subscription fee for the news ($300/month) is only 1/10 of the actual cost for many sites when you include the transmission costs. It is not EUnet or unido who is making the big bucks (if any) on the news - it is the German PTT and government! The backbones in EUnet does put on additional charges on the news feeds to pay for the machines and man-power! We want to run a reliable service for our customers - that costs! Who is suggesting we should (or can) run EUnet for free? Just running the Danish backbone (25 news sites, 80 mail sites, nameserver for .dk, and running a few gateways) is a full-time job, because we want to run a professional service to our customers. Our motto is: The mail must be delivered! and to accomplish that, we have to monitor log files and spool directories, forward or return failed mail, answer a lot of questions about E-mail addressing from the customers, maintain the .dk nameserver information, maintain the Danish uucp maps, play around with sendmail, etc. etc. etc. And we have to pay for our own machines too! Our prices for mail and news are calculated from our expenses (salaries and machines) to run a backbone with this level of service. If somebody can suggest a way we can get the necessary income while allowing our news site to redistribute news to other sites at a significantly lower price than ours, then we would certainly use it! But I cannot see how it will work when the sub sites would not give a single krone to the running of the backbone - please enlighten me! Let me put it this way: With our current tight budget, is it worth the risk of destroying the entire net to allow our own customers to compete directly with us - on much better terms (lower prices) than ourselves. If somebody wants to compete - and they are welcome - then they must do it on equal terms, i.e. buy the "raw materials" at the same cost we do - not buy it on a "1/25 share" from us and then sell it at 1/10 of our price! -- Kim F. Storm storm@texas.dk Tel +45 429 174 00 Texas Instruments, Marielundvej 46E, DK-2730 Herlev, Denmark No news is good news, but nn is better!
greenber@utoday.UUCP (Ross M. Greenberg) (07/26/89)
Rene' answered my question on EUNET's "profit" being zero. Even if it were making a profit (which is not the great evil many claim), I see no problem. What's all the fuss about, anyway? -- Ross M. Greenberg UNIX TODAY! 594 Third Avenue New York New York 10016 Review Editor Voice:(212)-889-6431 BBS:(212)-889-6438 uunet!utoday!greenber BIX: greenber MCI: greenber CIS: 72461,3212
rob@europa.inmos.co.uk (Robin Pickering) (07/26/89)
In article <570.24C7A4BC@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us> mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us writes: > >Let's say that it costs $10,000/month to ship the full news distribution >across the pond to unido. Let's also say that you have 10 sites that >feed directly off unido. You should charge each of those 10 sites >$1,000/month for their newsfeeds. Now, let's say that site A, which >gets its feed off unido, can get 9 other sites to feed off it. This sounds like a nice idea but in reality I doubt it would work. Most [USENET | Eunet] sites tend to be either Academic or Corporate R&D. Neither of these kinds of site tend to be set up to charge for services (i.e. USENET feeds). Speaking personally it is easy to get my boss to sign off a bill for around $600 every three months. It would be practically impossible to get the infrastructure in place to start charging fed sites etc. The reason that unido is so expensive is that the folks in Germany seem to *want* a star network for news. Thus all of the machine resources to feed the whole of the coutry must be located centrally and paid for out of subscriptions. It would appear that the major part of the subscriptions paid in Germany is not the actual shared cost of the Atlantic feed, but rather resource cost to the University of Dortmund. In the UK I suspect that one of the reasons news is cheaper is that the national backbone ukc *refuses* to feed leaf nodes (for news at least). Only nodes which undertake to feed a large number of downstream sites get a direct feed, but all nodes pay the same (~$110/Month). Thus ukc doesn't need as much machine/comms/human resources to support news and news is therefore cheaper. (This is not the whole picture because the UK mail network does tend to be fairly star shaped, and other factors such as number of sites affect costs in the UK too) If instead of spending large amounts of money upgrading their kit at the expense of subscribers, unido were to admit that they had limited resources and encourage the network to become more star shaped, I am sure costs could be brought down. Sites being faced with a simple choice - enjoying the benefits of close backbone connectivity at the (small) cost of feeding a few other sites or becoming a leaf node with no machine cost. Rob Pickering -- JANET: ROB@UK.CO.INMOS | Snail: 1000 Aztec West Internet: rob%inmos-c@col.hp.com | Almondsbury Rest of World: rob@inmos.co.uk | Bristol BS12 4SQ Phone: +44 454 611517 | UK dumb UUCP: ...ukc!inmos!rob or ...uunet!inmos-c!rob
peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (07/26/89)
In article <1018@isaak.UUCP>, woerz%isaak@isaak.uucp (Dieter Woerz) writes: > In article <5084@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: > > a) Sell feeds at [cost/#feeds] > That 's the first problem in my eyes. ... the "direct" feeds have to > pay very high prices... [which] will stop many connections from being > established in the first time, so the costs will remain high. So people get on further down the tree. That's not a problem. > This is a second problem over here. If I remember correctly, most or > nearly most of the news reading sites are Universities and public > research organizations [which can't sell feeds] This is a real problem, then. If you folks had brought *this* up in the first place, instead of flaming us for being parochial Americans (in my case, Australian) there would have been more light and less heat. Perhaps encouraging a few commercial sites would help... > > c) Sit back and watch a richly-connected network grow > > thanks to the invisible hand of market forces. > Perhaps some of you got now a better understanding, why there is no > such "richly-connected" network as in the states. Yeh, between the German Government and you you're not letting market forces work. It's not entirely your fault, but surely something could be done. Sight... > An other problem may lay in the fact, that EUnet (or dnet) is not too > well known here. I think, that in most Universities here, most > students are not allowed to read or post mail and news, because the > cpu-time is billed to the project they 're working on. Surely your systems can't cost so much that you're still billing by CPU time. I've got more CPU power at home than an undergraduate would ever need. -- Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation. Business: peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. | "...helping make the world Personal: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com. `-_-' | a quote-free zone..." Quote: Have you hugged your wolf today? 'U` | -- hjm@cernvax.cern.ch
brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) (07/27/89)
It is also worth noting that there's a lot more to being a central site than the cost of getting your news. Being a central site means you get a lot of mail routed through you. Feeding 10 other sites full feeds is also not free. It needs disk space, modems, phone lines, spare CPU cycles and staff to manage it all. Many central sites have ended up getting computers just to do news/mail, in part just to be nice to other people. They money for this is not chopped liver. Why do people in this group insist on caring about the way that other people run their own computers? If you don't like what they do in Europe, put "na" distributions on your articles. The Europeans will probably thank you for it. I think a lot of non-anarchists are slipping into our little anarchy as time goes by. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Rahul Dhesi) (07/27/89)
In article <3704@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes: >Why do people in this group insist on caring about the way that other >people run their own computers? If you don't like what they do in >Europe, put "na" distributions on your articles. The Europeans will >probably thank you for it. "The Europeans" is not a monolithic group that speaks with one voice. This whole brou-ha-ha began when Europeans posted articles with world distribution in which they complained about other Europeans. -- Rahul Dhesi <dhesi@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> UUCP: ...!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi
jeffrey@algor2.uu.net (Jeffrey Kegler) (07/27/89)
In the comparison between UUNET and EUnet, some have suggested that EUnet allow second and third order feeds to build up the size of the net in Europe, in the thought that this would raise volume and lower prices for all. It certainly is an attractive idea, but there are some differences. UUNET started with an almost overhealthy variety of backbones, leaves, second-order and third-order leaves already existing. Due to the cost of throwing all our priceless musings across the pond, EUnet is essentially starting a net from scratch. Another issue comes to mind. If EUnet restricts further distribution of news by its subscribers, is not violating a host of copyrights that allow you to distribute materials only if you do not restrict their distribution to others? If some copylefted material reaches EUnet and they distribute it, charging for the costs as they calculate them, good so far. But am I to understand they are banning the recipient from further distributing them? Finally, a number of posters have said they do not welcome comments from North Americans about their portion of USENET. Why anyone not interested in what we have to say started reading USENET news in the first place totally escapes me. That any section of the net wants the rest not to discuss its administration seems to me to indicate its administration may be well worth discussing. -- Jeffrey Kegler, Independent UNIX Consultant, Algorists, Inc. jeffrey@algor2.UU.NET or uunet!algor2!jeffrey 1762 Wainwright DR, Reston VA 22090
seindal@skinfaxe.diku.dk (Rene' Seindal) (07/28/89)
jeffrey@algor2.uu.net (Jeffrey Kegler) writes: > If some copylefted material reaches EUnet and they distribute it, > charging for the costs as they calculate them, good so far. But am I > to understand they are banning the recipient from further distributing > them? If you receive copylefted or public domain software via EUnet, you can redistribute it if you want to. EUnet cannot interfere, and wouldn't want to. What you are not allowed to, is to provide *non-EUUG* members with a newsfeed, you have yourself got via EUnet. This is due to the varying laws in the different european countries, regarding the national PTTs monopolies on telecommunications, as I have mentioned earlier. Whether or not you can provide other EUUG members with a newsfeed is a matter of structure of the network, which is an purely internal EUUG (and EUnet) matter. There is a problem in this, since it is hard to tell where the borderline is between redistributing some software and a few individual messages, and providing a (partial) newsfeed. Rene' Seindal (seindal@diku.dk).
ap@unido.UUCP (Axel Pawlik) (07/28/89)
>If instead of spending large amounts of money upgrading their kit at the >expense of subscribers, unido were to admit that they had limited resources >and encourage the network to become more star shaped, I am sure costs could >be brought down. Sites being faced with a simple choice - enjoying the >benefits of close backbone connectivity at the (small) cost of feeding a >few other sites or becoming a leaf node with no machine cost. (I guess you mean "less star-shaped" in your quote, since we are very star-shaped right now.) Which is what we are doing right now. Yes, our machine in fact is limited, though in the moment that is not a problem. Since we could decreased the tariff for news, and changed the overall tariff structure so that a small subscription of newsgroups costs a relatively small amount, we've experienced a substantial increase of news subscriptions. This in turn led to an even lower tariff. In addition we encourage news subscribers feeding other sites, given that all of those take part in the cost sharing. Since April this year we financially honor subfeeding by allowing 25 % per five subfeeded sites (as has been mentioned here before). So by feeding 20 others, you can have your personal news feed for free. regards, Axel
root@infoac.rmi.de (Operator) (08/11/89)
peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >Perhaps encouraging a few commercial sites would help... Yes, you are right. I had a conversation with an employee of a company having leased lined to the US with spare capacity every night. The argument, why they don't do it is: The quality of the line/line operator(s) is bad. The line goes down every 2nd day or weekend. If the newsfeed is down it will directly influence the companies reputation instead of mcvax/unido's. Sic! Rupert ***************************************************************** ___ ____ ___ _ _ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ _ _ /__/ / / / / /\ / /__ / /__//__// /__//__ /\ / / \ / / __/_ / / /__ / / // //__ / //__ / / ***************************************************************** * addresses: uucp rmohr@infoac.rmi.de rmohr@unido.bitnet * * cis 72446,415 Fax 49 241 32822 * *****************************************************************