jf@laura.UUCP (Jan-Hinrich Fessel) (06/26/89)
In article <263@icdi10.UUCP> fr@icdi10.UUCP (Fred Rump from home) writes: >Also unido controls things tightly to feed anyone over there at a profit. Wrong. We don't make profit. In fact, our laws in gemany do not allow universities to make profit. The money we raise is used for maintenance of our equipment and for paying (small) wages to the students running the backbone, and last not least for paying our share of transmission-costs to the european backbone mcvax. We have to spend money for running the backbone and for getting a computer on which we can do serious work, because our university is not willing to pay or contribute system-time anymore, and noone is donating us anything. We like to have as much users as possible to minimize the costs for everyone. >I have a friend with a Telebit who is trying to set up a direct call to me to >receive a few groups and then pass them around. But woe be to him if he's >found out. Yep, be glad you live here. No problem in germany too, as long as 1 is paying and the rest does not want to appear explicitly in the maps. Maybe noone is following the discussion: read dfk@cwi's article... Jan-Hinrich -- Jan-Hinrich Fessel Universitaet Dortmund, IRB jf@unido.uucp || jf@unido.bitnet There's no way to delay that trouble comin' every day... F.Z. =============================================================================
mp@laura.UUCP (Michael Pickers) (06/27/89)
>In article <263@icdi10.UUCP> fr@icdi10.UUCP (Fred Rump from home) writes: >>Also unido controls things tightly to feed anyone over there at a profit. > Ok, First let me introduce myself to the readers of this group. I'm one of the 'postmaster@unido.uucp'. I would like to get some facts straight about the *real* subsrcription rates of 'unido'. Everybody seems to be guessing arround. Here are the rates of 'unido', effective since 1. April 1989. (No joke :-) I'll give the original prices in German 'Mark' (Deutsche Mark = DM) You can translate that into any currency you want. The current exchange rate for US $ is right now: 1$ = 2,-- DM (or DM 1,-- = 0,50 $ :-) Now to the rates: We offer two different basic subscriptions: 1. Subscription for E-Mail and German and European News: DM 80,-- / Month or 2. Subscription for E-Mail and German and European News + 10% of international(=non european) News : DM 120,-- / Month + 20% of international(=non european) News : DM 160,-- / Month + 35% of international(=non european) News : DM 210,-- / Month + 60% of international(=non european) News : DM 260,-- / Month + above 60% of international(=non european) News : DM 300,-- / Month (i.e. 20% of international News means 20% of the total volume (in kB) of *all* international groups ) For E-Mail we charge on volume for international trafic for sending *and* receiving mail because we have no one else who would pay for it. E-Mail: Within Germany : DM -,-- / kB Within Europe : DM -,25 / kB rest of the World : DM -,80 / kB Every site has to pay itself for the communication costs with 'unido'. We offer *no* special tariffs for individuals or universities. However: a) Individuals are allowed to connect to 'unido' at the normal rate b) We are able to make special agreements with organized groups of individuals (i.e. the now forming Subnet) and mailboxes. One point about subfeeding: We encurrage subfeeding, however German sites, especially comercial sites have two major problems with that: a) Subfeeding needs more manpower. b) Security considerations. As it has been already pointed out, we are *not* allowed to make any profit. And don't forget that we are a public university run by the government and therefore we have a very tight budget. It is also very difficult to get any equipment or even money as grants from the european industry. Therefore we have to pay for all our equipment. (Well sometimes we get special prices, but that doesn't include maintanence and so on...) After all running a backbone for >150 sites (some sites in the German map are not connected yet, they've just registred the name) is something you can't do as a hobby. Michael Pickers Computer Science Department, University of Dortmund IRB - Informatik Rechner Betriebsgruppe 4600 Dortmund 50, P.O. Box 500500, W.-Germany E-mail address UUCP: mp@unido.uucp (...uunet!unido!mp) BITNET: mp@unido.bitnet
tneff@bfmny0.UUCP (Tom Neff) (06/28/89)
In article <1444@laura.UUCP> jf@laura.UUCP (Jan-Hinrich Fessel) writes: >In article <263@icdi10.UUCP> fr@icdi10.UUCP (Fred Rump from home) writes: >>Also unido controls things tightly to feed anyone over there at a profit. > >Wrong. We don't make profit. In fact, our laws in gemany do not allow >universities to make profit. The money we raise is used for maintenance >of our equipment and for paying (small) wages to the students running the >backbone, and last not least for paying our share of transmission-costs >to the european backbone mcvax. >We have to spend money for running the backbone and for getting a >computer on which we can do serious work, because our university >is not willing to pay or contribute system-time anymore, and noone >is donating us anything. It would be more accurate to say that your laws require you to plow your profits back into your plant, than to say you can't make any. The reason this distinction is non-trivial is that bit about "getting a computer on which you can do serious work." Using revenues from net participation fees for OTHER purposes besides providing the net service itself, is what some folks dislike. I could charge people for a newsfeed and set the rates so as to pay not only for the computer and phone time (and operator time) involved in providing the feed, but also to pay for the sheetrock on my back porch addition, and a better VCR. I might even complain that nobody else seems willing to give me the money to do these things, so I have to get it where I can. I feel I would still be violating the spirit of a not-for-profit operation, however plaintive my sheetrock situation. Fortunately in this country there's lots of choice where you get a newsfeed; if my subscribers felt I was padding my pockets excessively they could and would go somewhere else. That's where the monopoly comes in. What if I was the ONLY feed site in the state, and local regulations kept it that way. THEN if I diverted net revenues for other purposes, my subscribers would have nowhere else to go and they would complain bitterly. It's easy to guess what such a discussion would sound like -- I think we're already having it. :-) My advice to European sites is to put flowers in the State's gun barrels, link up like crazy and create a free, anarchic net. It worked here for a while... sort of still does. Tianmenet, anyone? -- "My God, Thiokol, when do you \\ Tom Neff want me to launch -- next April?" \\ uunet!bfmny0!tneff
jerry@olivey.olivetti.com (Jerry Aguirre) (06/28/89)
I doubt very much that the trans-atlantic costs dominate the final cost to the user. It turns out that getting data around Europe is usually more difficult (costly) than getting it across the atlantic. (But we will never know because even the EUNet members don't seem to have the cost break down.) Aside from all of this there is a real attitude difference between Europe and North America. The governments restrict the hell out of tele-communications but presumably that is what the people want. The companies don't subsidize EUNet. Here it is considered a job benefit. They set up this pure "star" topology around mcvax and it feels "right" to them. Here the people would be screaming revolution. Look at what happened with the north american "backbone" and that was anarchy compared to EUNet. So the point is not whether unido is forced to operate in the way they do but whether they prefer to. As a test, what would unido do if some company down the street said that they were importing the "international groups" from the US over their leased line and unido could get them for the cost of a local call instead of paying mcvax for them? Based on my experience they shy away from me like I just offered them stolen property, mutter something about illegal, and refuse to discuss it. So the real point is they won't change because they don't WANT to run the way we do. Jerry Aguirre
rick@uunet.UU.NET (Rick Adams) (06/29/89)
> So the point is not whether unido is forced to operate in the way they > do but whether they prefer to. As a test, what would unido do if some > company down the street said that they were importing the "international > groups" from the US over their leased line and unido could get them for > the cost of a local call instead of paying mcvax for them? I have no doubt that they would take everything they could get from the local call. I've been following this saga for years. Every time someone in Europe claims to have found a cheaper way to get news/mail to Europe they have either 1) been doing something illegal (e.g. using stolen x.25 accounts or phone credit cards, etc.) or 2) been flatly wrong. This has been so consistent that I dont even bother to check any more. Here's real information on costs for getting news to Germany. (as of last month) Let's presume 100 megabytes of news per month. Figure 7,200 bps (figure a trailblazer modem). That's about 31 hours per month to transfer the news. Real rates: 3.00 DM per minute to call the USA from Germany 0.36 DM per minute for a "long distance" call within Germany 0.76 DM per minute to call mcvax from Germany. So, to get news directly from the USA, it would cost you 5,580 DM per month in phone charges. Or, you could pay unido 300 dm per month (their highest charge which includes the cost of bringing news from mcvax) plus pay the German phone charges: 300 + (31*60*.36) = 669.6 +300 = 969.6 DM per month Since its a 5 -1 cost difference, I'd say unido is providing a damned good service. In fact, if someone else could do it cheaper and just as well, I think unido would happily become a customer instead of a provider. The basic point is how can someone who thinks nothing of paying about US $2,800 per month to bring news into Germany complain about the 300 dm + "local" charges being exhorbitantly high. The only conclusion I can come to is that they're not really paying that $2,800. Since I dont know of any phone company thats giving away 31 hours per month of free international calling, I must presume that they're spending someone elses money. (If they were spending their own money, wouldn't they just pay unido? I know I would!) ---rick p.s. its also interesting to note that unido has been DROPPING their rates. You see the more people that use them, the more people are sharing the costs, so the charge is lower for everybody. If they were truly trying to profit, wouldn't they keep their charges the same when their costs go down?
karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) (06/29/89)
In article <1444@laura.UUCP> jf@laura.UUCP (Jan-Hinrich Fessel) writes: >In article <263@icdi10.UUCP> fr@icdi10.UUCP (Fred Rump from home) writes: >>Also unido controls things tightly to feed anyone over there at a profit. > >Wrong. We don't make profit. In fact, our laws in gemany do not allow >universities to make profit. The money we raise is used for maintenance >of our equipment and for paying (small) wages to the students running the >backbone, and last not least for paying our share of transmission-costs >to the european backbone mcvax. Up to this point everything is fine.... but that doesn't cover $47,000+ a year! >We have to spend money for running the backbone and for getting a >computer on which we can do serious work, because our university >is not willing to pay or contribute system-time anymore, and noone >is donating us anything. AHA! Here's the rub, and the part that people are up in arms about. Your university has seen fit to take from all the Usenet people in Germany so it can have a "computer to do serious work on". Now, may I ask, just why should the users of Usenet pay for YOUR private computer system? Apparently, the consensus is that they should not, given the large and heated debate going on right now over what your "non profit" enterprise charges for feeding news! Why don't you buy your own computer, with your own money, to do your serious work -- and use the unido funds ONLY FOR USENET FEEDS AND DIRECTLY RELATED COSTS. The cost of a connection would probably drop by 75%+ -- and the complaints would stop! Alternately, stop blacklisting those who tell you to stuff your fees and go elsewhere for their feed. That's what free markets are all about. If you want to claim that you are simply covering your expenses in making the net available, then publish a full accounting of your costs and revenues for the last year. Of course this wouldn't be a good idea if the numbers don't back up your claims - like if they show that the shiny new system you do your "serious work" on - and keep to yourself -- was paid for by all those German sites unido fees! ;-) >We like to have as much users as possible to minimize the costs for everyone. ....and you will insure it by practicing blacklisting and other anti-social tactics..... (I'm not impressed) >>I have a friend with a Telebit who is trying to set up a direct call to me to >>receive a few groups and then pass them around. But woe be to him if he's >>found out. Yep, be glad you live here. >No problem in germany too, as long as 1 is paying and the rest does >not want to appear explicitly in the maps. But what if they DO want to appear in the maps? They should be able to do so, at least under a "uucp" name. What if I haul off and form another domain, and allow anyone who wants to in Germany to join it -- and route the mail through us to someone who's willing to poll here in the US? That would put a little bit of water on your unido fire, no? Perhaps we in the USA need to do exactly that, and teach you a little economics at the same time. >Maybe noone is following the discussion: read dfk@cwi's article... We ARE following the discussion, and the more we hear from your side of the pond the more obvious it is that you're doing what amounts to robbing those who get their news from you, with the barrel of a "usenet gun" pointed at their heads. While that wouldn't even be a cause for protest in a FREE MARKET, you are ALSO trying to prevent said free market from being a reality -- by blacklisting and otherwise harassing those sites which tell you to stuff your charges and go elsewhere. My offer holds -- any European site which wants to get news from us can do so for the price of the phone call across the Big Pond. Send email for connection information. If enough people want to poll I'll even go find a way to get a domain set up for it. -- 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"
pim@ctisbv.UUCP (Pim Zandbergen) (06/30/89)
In article <3650@ddsw1.MCS.COM> karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) writes: > >My offer holds -- any European site which wants to get news from us can do >so for the price of the phone call across the Big Pond. Send email for >connection information. If enough people want to poll I'll even go find a way >to get a domain set up for it. > Maybe it should be made clear that not all European backbones charge the way unido does. For instance, the rates in the Netherlands are much more fair. In order to get a USENET feed, the first step is to become a member of the NLUUG, the Dutch Unix Users Group. For a commercial site, the contribution fee is Dfl 600 ($263.15), universities pay Dfl 200 ($87.71) and individuals pay pay Dfl 100 ($43.85) PER YEAR. Further costs USENET connection: Dfl. 30 $ 13.15 / month Full or partial news feed: Dfl. 80 $ 35.08 / month Mail within the Netherlands: Dfl. 10 $ 4.38 / Megabyte Mail within Europe: Dfl. 200 $ 87.71 / Megabyte Mail outside Europe: Dfl. 250 $ 109.64 / Megabyte Connect time costs: Dfl. 2.50 $ 0.21 / hour Every day, you have one hour of free connect time. With a Trailblazer (officially approved by the Dutch PTT!) this is enough to get a full newsfeed, so connect time costs are for slow modems only. For a commercial site this adds up to Dfl. 160 ($ 70.17) per month. This is a lot less then the price our German friends have to pay. But the again, the costs are lower too: hp4nl, the Dutch backbone, and mcvax, the European backbone are tied up in a LAN, so this is a practically free link. Also, the NLUUG has received several donations. The system known as hp4nl has been donated by Hewlett Packard, the Trailblazers have been donated by Koning en Hartman, and the mail and routing software was donated by ACE Associated Computer Experts. -- --------------------+----------------------+----------------------------------- Pim Zandbergen | phone: +31 70 542302 | CTI Software BV pim@ctisbv.UUCP | fax : +31 70 512837 | Laan Copes van Cattenburch 70 ...!uunet!mcvax!hp4nl!ctisbv!pim | 2585 GD The Hague, The Netherlands
philip@axis.fr (Philip Peake) (06/30/89)
In article <3650@ddsw1.MCS.COM>, karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) writes: > In article <1444@laura.UUCP> jf@laura.UUCP (Jan-Hinrich Fessel) writes: > >In article <263@icdi10.UUCP> fr@icdi10.UUCP (Fred Rump from home) writes: > >>Also unido controls things tightly to feed anyone over there at a profit. > > > >Wrong. We don't make profit. In fact, our laws in gemany do not allow > >universities to make profit. The money we raise is used for maintenance > >of our equipment and for paying (small) wages to the students running the > >backbone, and last not least for paying our share of transmission-costs > >to the european backbone mcvax. > > Up to this point everything is fine.... but that doesn't cover $47,000+ a year! Please go back and read all the articles posted on this subject. Particularly those coming from UNIDO and from Danniel Karrenburg (cwi). You will see that the clain of $47,000 was based upon all 300+ sites in the German map receiving news, and paying more than is actually charged by UNIDO. In fact, there are only ~30 news sites, and they don't pay the exagerated fees claimed when the $47,000 was 'calculated'. If you want access to the real accounts, join the EUUG and ask for them, they can be made available - the figures are regularly distributed to any member who wants them. Remember, the EUUG is composed of 3500+ members, organised into national groups - the structure is completely democratic. If you think that there is any fraud or malpractice taking place, then you are insulting the inteligence of these people - note also that the Governing Board of the EUUG also accepts USENIX observers being present. NOTHING is, or can be hidden - EUnet is supposed to be 'self financing', in fact it still receives some aid from EUUG finances. The only real thing that you must try to understand is that we are slowly moving to the position of being completely self financing - this means no using other peoples machines, disk space, telephone lines, X25 lines etc we PAY for everything - anyone wanting to join in just has to pay their fair share - if they don't want to join in - ok, go do it yourself, BUT we will not, and cannot, give free services to anyone. Philip
jerry@olivey.olivetti.com (Jerry Aguirre) (07/01/89)
In article <58956@uunet.UU.NET> rick@uunet.UU.NET (Rick Adams) writes: >I have no doubt that they would take everything they could get from the >local call. > >I've been following this saga for years. Every time someone in Europe >claims to have found a cheaper way to get news/mail to Europe >they have either 1) been doing something illegal (e.g. using >stolen x.25 accounts or phone credit cards, etc.) or 2) been flatly wrong. Well Rick, I can't speak for Germany but I have been sending news to Italy for nearly a year now. My manager knows and the manager over there knows. The line is a dedicated leased one so no stolen credit is being used. While it isn't a "local" call for them the Italian "backbone" doesn't seem interested in this ...
lee@doc.cs.unm.edu (Lee Ward) (07/01/89)
In article <576@axis.fr> philip@axis.fr (Philip Peake) writes: >If you want access to the real accounts, join the EUUG and ask for them, >they can be made available - the figures are regularly distributed to >any member who wants them. > >Remember, the EUUG is composed of 3500+ members, organised into national >groups - the structure is completely democratic. > >If you think that there is any fraud or malpractice taking place, then >you are insulting the inteligence of these people - note also that >the Governing Board of the EUUG also accepts USENIX observers being present. > Remember, the U.S. is a government "of the people by the people" and is composed of a number somewhat larger than 3500+ members. The structure is completely fascist, er, socialist, er, democratic, er, something... If you think there is any fraud or malpractice taking place, then you are insulting the intelligence of these people - note also that the Governing Body of the U.S. also accepts Soviet observers being present. They need insulting, both the EUUG and the U.S. They need to get a little more involved in who is doing what to/for them and where/why THEIR money is being spent. Any organization is capable of sticking it's members. It is no insult to claim that a mistake has been made. It's no insult to point out that the bureacracy of any organization needs careful scrutiny by it's membership. --Lee (Ward)
fr@icdi10.UUCP (Fred Rump from home) (07/03/89)
In article <774@ctisbv.UUCP> pim@ctisbv.UUCP (Pim Zandbergen) writes: ->In article <3650@ddsw1.MCS.COM> karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) writes: ->> ->>My offer holds -- any European site which wants to get news from us can do ->For instance, the rates in the Netherlands are ->much more fair. -> ->For a commercial site this adds up to Dfl. 160 ($ 70.17) per month. ->This is a lot less then the price our German friends have to pay. Now there. And all you folks over there said it couldn't be done. I think that certainly is a reasonable fee. And they even took donations. Has anybody even asked for them at unido? Or would that too be out of proper form. Fred -- This is my house. My castle will get started right after I finish with news. 26 Warren St. uucp: ...{bpa dsinc uunet}!cdin-1!icdi10!fr Beverly, NJ 08010 domain: fred@cdin-1.uu.net or icdi10!fr@cdin-1.uu.net 609-386-6846 "Freude... Alle Menschen werden Brueder..." - Schiller
allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery) (07/04/89)
As quoted from <3650@ddsw1.MCS.COM> by karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger): +--------------- | My offer holds -- any European site which wants to get news from us can do | so for the price of the phone call across the Big Pond. Send email for | connection information. If enough people want to poll I'll even go find a way | to get a domain set up for it. +--------------- Consider it seconded. And since NCoast.ORG was set up with the express intention of expanding to a "domain park" given sufficient interest, there's no problem with the domain. (And for those who are permitted: we have a Telebit.) Send mail to me or to rhg@ncoast.org (uunet!ncoast.org!rhg, etc.) for more information. (BTW, this applies to domestic feeds as well. And a change is in the wind here; we will soon be able to operate at full capacity.) ++Brandon -- Brandon S. Allbery, moderator of comp.sources.misc allbery@ncoast.org uunet!hal.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery ncoast!allbery@hal.cwru.edu Send comp.sources.misc submissions to comp-sources-misc@<backbone> NCoast Public Access UN*X - (216) 781-6201, 300/1200/2400 baud, login: makeuser
dave@ecrcvax.UUCP (Dave Morton) (07/05/89)
In article <58956@uunet.UU.NET> rick@uunet.UU.NET (Rick Adams) writes: > >Since its a 5 -1 cost difference, I'd say unido is providing a damned >good service. Here,here. But it's not just unido, the other EUnet backbone sites as well. > >In fact, if someone else could do it cheaper and just as well, I think >unido would happily become a customer instead of a provider. I dont think they'd disagree on that point. > >p.s. its also interesting to note that unido has been DROPPING their >rates. You see the more people that use them, the more people >are sharing the costs, so the charge is lower for everybody. If they >were truly trying to profit, wouldn't they keep their charges >the same when their costs go down? Sure they would but they dont. We are going to see increasing economies of scale in the future as well, as more people join up. The limiting factor for me is not unido but bundespost costs. To my knowledge we are one of the *only* sites in germany (still) receiving all the news that unido gets and that's 60MB a month. We pay unido DM 300 for that but we pay the bundespost over DM 2300 last month just to get the stuff down from there to Munich. I guess you could say we're pretty rich, not many companies in europe would be willing to pay those monies. As rick, daniel & others have pointed out, the only way we *can* function is the way we're doing it right now.
karl@ficc.uu.net (karl lehenbauer) (07/06/89)
In article <1444@laura.UUCP>, jf@laura.UUCP (Jan-Hinrich Fessel) writes: > Wrong. We don't make profit. In fact, our laws in gemany do not allow > universities to make profit. ... > We have to spend money for running the backbone and for getting a ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > computer on which we can do serious work, because our university ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > is not willing to pay or contribute system-time anymore, and noone > is donating us anything. Call it not making a profit, but the fees are being used to subsidize your research computing, assuming these remarks refer to unido. Presumably connect and monthly fees to unido would be lower if this were not the case. -- -- uunet!ficc!karl
sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks) (07/07/89)
<43790@oliveb.olivetti.com> <58956@uunet.UU.NET> <43956@oliveb.olivetti.com> Sender: Reply-To: sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks) Followup-To: Distribution: Organization: Corpane Industries, Inc. Keywords: In article <43956@oliveb.olivetti.com> jerry@olivey.UUCP (Jerry Aguirre) writes: >In article <58956@uunet.UU.NET> rick@uunet.UU.NET (Rick Adams) writes: >>I have no doubt that they would take everything they could get from the >>local call. >> >Well Rick, I can't speak for Germany but I have been sending news to >Italy for nearly a year now. My manager knows and the manager over >there knows. The line is a dedicated leased one so no stolen credit is >being used. > >While it isn't a "local" call for them the Italian "backbone" doesn't >seem interested in this ... 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? Since the sites (Italy, Netherlands) are already paying for their news and calling THEM wouldn't cost them anything, I bet they would be happy to allow EUUG to feed news and mail off of them for a slight fee to cover the cost of the extra traffic and mail EUUG would generate. Why not ask them? -- 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.
mp@laura.UUCP (Michael Pickers) (07/11/89)
For those who don't know me yet, I'm one of the 'postmaster@unido.uucp'. I think it is time again to straighten out some missunderstandings about 'unido'. One of my collegue wrote the following stupid sentence by mistake: >In article <1444@laura.UUCP>, jf@laura.UUCP (Jan-Hinrich Fessel) writes: > We have to spend money for running the backbone and for getting a > computer on which we can do serious work, because our university > is not willing to pay or contribute system-time anymore, and noone > is donating us anything. This is meant totaly differently than it sounds. Up to now, the backbone and the machine where we, the postmasters, answer mail are totally seperate machines. The backbone machine has indeed been payed by the money we take because 2 years ago, when we had to upgrade our old backbone, there was *no* company that was willing to donate a suitable machine. (The old backbone was indeed a donation, but it was too small [Siemens MX2 = 10 Mhz NS 32032, 180 Mb disk space only]. Today we have a Siemens MX500 = Sequent Balance = 10 * 10 Mhz NS 32032, > 1Gb disk space, but that's rather new, the daily throughput is *at least* 60 Mb) In some other European countries this might look differently, but in Germany this hasn't worked yet. The machine where we answer our mail is one of the machines owned and payed by the university and it is used for other things as well. We are now at a point, where the university is *not* able to give us the neccessary resources for our daily postmaster work any more (that means no CPU-cycles, no Disk-space) We have just recently *puchased* another disk for the backbone machine and we will now move over to our own machine. (That's how we got > 1Gb. disk space now, a couple weeks ago we only had a total of 500 Mb. For a central backbone you have to think in different dimensions than an AT-clone with XENIX) If you are able to give us a machine that is *strong* on IO, with reasonable standard UNIX (from our viewpoint that's BSD), strong on networking (we are moving towards IP inside EUnet) and proper support in case of HW-failures, we will certainly look into it. Up two now no computer manufacturer in W-Germany (or branch of a US manufacturer located in Germany) was willing to support EUnet in Germany that strong. There is only one manufacturer that is cooperative, that is Siemens. In pratice that means we got the machine itself a litte cheaper, and we have direct support from the UNIX kernel team in Munich. But the realy big and fast disks we have to buy ourself. (or for example our modems, PADs, the X.25 rotary...) >Call it not making a profit, but the fees are being used to subsidize your >research computing, assuming these remarks refer to unido. Presumably connect >and monthly fees to unido would be lower if this were not the case. I think at this point it should be clear that we do *not* subsidize the research computing of the University by our fees and we have never chared for connect time. Just a short notice on another topic. In Europe the current customers of the services of EUnet want a reliable service. That's why we can not use private company lines to the US which might go out of service the next day just because the management wants so. When 'unido' is offline for just a couple hours, and we havn't told anyone in advance, you can count on it that the phone will ring within 30 minutes and from then on constantly until we fix the problem. Michael Pickers Computer Science Department, University of Dortmund IRB - Informatik Rechner Betriebsgruppe 4600 Dortmund 50, P.O. Box 500500, W.-Germany E-mail address UUCP: mp@unido.uucp (...uunet!unido!mp) BITNET: mp@unido.bitnet
fr@icdi10.UUCP (Fred Rump from home) (07/11/89)
In article <743@ecrcvax.UUCP> dave@ecrcvax.UUCP (Dave Morton) writes: ->In article <58956@uunet.UU.NET> rick@uunet.UU.NET (Rick Adams) writes: ->The limiting factor for me is not unido but bundespost costs. To my ->knowledge we are one of the *only* sites in germany (still) receiving all ->the news that unido gets and that's 60MB a month. We pay unido DM 300 for ->that but we pay the bundespost over DM 2300 last month just to get the ->stuff down from there to Munich. I promised not to post anymore on this discussion but it may of interest to the readers who have been following this European cost dilemma to read the July 17th issue of Business Week where (pg 83) tremendous opposition is already building up to prevent any cost DEcreases with the coming EC unification. France, Italy, Spain and Belgium are in the forefront not to cut costs or allow privatization of e-mail and data transmission services. They plan to take their case to the European Court of Justice as their sovereignty is being violated. So much for Unity of the European Community. Fred -- This is my house. My castle will get started right after I finish with news. 26 Warren St. uucp: ...{bpa dsinc uunet}!cdin-1!icdi10!fr Beverly, NJ 08010 domain: fred@cdin-1.uu.net or icdi10!fr@cdin-1.uu.net 609-386-6846 "Freude... Alle Menschen werden Brueder..." - Schiller