rick@seismo.UUCP (04/11/87)
The Usenix Association is pleased to announce the funding of the UUNET
project on an experimental basis. This continues the association's
goals of fostering innovation and promoting the import and export of
new ideas.
UUNET is a non-profit communications service designed to provide access
to USENET news, UUCP mail, ARPAnet mail, and various source archives at
low cost by obtaining volume discounts. There are no restrictions on
what you may send nor on redistributing what you obtain from or through
UUNET. UUNET is effectively a common carrier. Charges are calculated to
recover costs.
Operationally, UUNET consists of a 10 processor Sequent Balance 21000
located in Arlington, VA. The system is connected to Tymnet via a
high-speed leased line. It can easily handle 25 simultaneous uucico
transfers and will be upgraded to match demand. It is administered by
the same people who are currently administering "seismo" (everybody's
favorite mail relay...). Operations personnel are on site 24 hours/day
Monday - Friday and someone is always on call on weekends. Availability
and reliability of the system will be high. The system is dedicated to
UUNET and has no function other than as a communications relay.
Currently the UUNET machine is tightly coupled to "seismo". This means
that having a connection to UUNET is effectively having a connection to
seismo, i.e. a well connected news and mail relay. UUNET should be
fully operational on May 1.
To access the UUNET system from within the United States, you dial a
local phone number (from thousands of US cities) and connect to
Tymnet. You are then connected to UUNET via the Tymnet X.25 public
data network. International sites may access UUNET via direct
host-to-host X.25 connection. No special hardware or software is
required. The connection to Tymnet is made with an ordinary modem
(V.22bis/Bell 212A/Bell 103). The standard UUCP communications
protocols are supported. Accessing UUNET will be as easy as with any
other UUCP connection.
The cost is $3 per hour of connect time during off-peak times ($5 per
hour from Hawaii). Off-peak times are 6:00 PM to 7:00 AM Monday -
Friday and all day Saturday and Sunday. (Your time zone is used to
determine peak or off-peak time, not necessarily the time zone in which
the UUNET system is located). It is anticipated that the most traffic
will take place during off-peak rates. Access is available during peak
rate times at substantially higher rates ($20 - $32 per hour depending
on location). There is a membership charge of $30 per month (less than
$1 per day) to cover administrative costs.
By comparison, ATTMAIL charges $2 per month membership and about $30
per connect hour. ATTMAIL does not offer off-peak rates. CSNET charges
a membership fee in the thousands of dollars annually, $54 per connect
hour during peak times and $30 per hour during off-peak hours. UUNET is
not intended to compete directly with either ATTMAIL or CSNET. Their
higher fees include additional services and a much larger support
organization. If you do not need (or can't afford) their extra
services, then UUNET may be for you.
There are several reasons why you should use the UUNET service.
1) Cost: If you are currently paying for long distance calls to send
uucp mail or news, then you should save a substantial amount of money
in communications costs.
2) Reliability: UUNET exists as a communications relay. It will never
be unavailable because some other project needs it. Nor will it be
unavailable because no one has the time to maintain it. It is run as
a business, not as sideline nor as a favor to other sites. The number of
intermediate hops for news and mail will be greatly reduced, thereby
increasing the reliability.
3) Availability: UUNET will be the best connected news machine in the
country. ANYONE can be directly connected to a backbone site and not
have to depend on the kindness of others to redistribute newsgroups
that are important to you. Of course, you may have a full newsfeed, a
partial newsfeed, or none at all. You get what you are willing to pay
for. (A full news feed would cost about $150 per month in connect
time.) UUNET will always carry all newsgroups. This includes any new
news categories that may appear other than the "standard" set.
4) Accessibility: UUNET will be able to function as an official gateway
into the ARPANET. This also means that you will be able to directly
access other networks that are similarly gatewayed into the ARPANET
(E.g. BITNET, CSNET, etc). In the future, gateways to other existing
mail services will be provided (E.g. MCImail, Telemail, etc). UUNET can
also act as the mail forwarder for your domain.
5) Archives: UUNET will make available for uucp access an extensive
archive of publicly available Unix software. At a minimum, this will
include the latest GNU software, the latest Kermit distributions (for
many cpu types, not just Unix), all the ARPANET RFCs, access to the
Simtel-20 archives, and the netlibd archives at Argonne (EISPACK,
LINPACK, etc). Again, you pay only for the cost of transferring the
software. You will never again have to worry about how to obtain
software that is "available for public ftp". It will be made available
for you to uucp.
As previously mentioned, Usenix has funded UUNET for an experimental
period. Currently funding exists through July 31. To offer these
services at these prices, UUNET must generate a large volume of
traffic. If a large enough volume of traffic is seen by the end of
July, Usenix will spin off the UUNET experiment into an independent
non-profit organization that will continue the service with the same
basis. If a large enough interest is not shown to allow UUNET to
recover its operating costs, Usenix will regrettably have to
discontinue funding.
In summary, if your organization has come to depend on electronic mail
and news as part of its daily business, you need a professional
communications service that you can depend on. If you are considering
subscribing to UUNET, please do so soon. If enough early support is not
shown, the service may not be available when you decide you need it.
As an incentive, any organization subscribing to UUNET in April will
have its May membership fee waived. (So, for the first month, your only
risk in trying the service is the hourly connect charge).
For a subscription form or for further information, please contact:
Peter Salus
UUNET/Usenix
P.O. Box 2299
Berkeley, CA 94710
+1 415 528 8649
{seismo,ucbvax,cbosgd,ames,amdahl}!usenix!peter
---rickrick@seismo.UUCP (04/15/87)
In the original posting I said that using ATTMAIL cost about $30 per hour. Some people have taken exception to that figure. Since ATTMAIL charges by 7500 character chunks instead of hourly, it was necessary to convert to similar units to make any comparison. Since the UUNET pricing and the CSNET pricing are by the hour, I converted the ATTMAIL price to an hourly basis. ATTMAIL does not charge by connection time. However, since we are talking about transferring data and not on-line composition, I think the $30 per hour is valid for comparison purposes. Figuring a cost of 80 cents to transfer a 7500 byte message and a throughput of 800 baud on a 1200 baud modem (a reasonable throughput according to most systems log files), we get 800 baud -> 80 characters per second -> 288,000 characters per hour. 288,000 / 7500 = 38.4 message chunks * 80 cents per chunk = $30.72 So, the effective price of sending data for 1 hour through ATTMAIL is actually in excess of the $30 per hour I mentioned. (If you use 2400 baud instead of 1200 baud, the hourly cost is correspondingly higher) Note that this is a best case. If you message was only 500 bytes, you would still pay the 80 cents. To work it the other way, to send a 7500 character message through UUNET would be: (7500 character message + 800 character header) / 288,000 characters per hour * $3 per hour = 8.6 cents to send your 80 cent message. Actually it could be as high as 15 cents because we charge a 3 minute minimum. Or, to convert both pricing schemes using the above assumptions, UUNET would be slightly over 1 cent per 1000 characters, while ATTMAIL would be over 10 cents per 1000 characters. ATTMAIL excels at offering a telex service and in dealing with people who do not have a dedicated Unix system for mail. However, the cost of using ATTMAIL as a uucp gateway is too expensive (at least for any non-trivial volume). ---rick
dyer@spdcc.UUCP (04/16/87)
>ATTMAIL excels at offering a telex service and in dealing with people >who do not have a dedicated Unix system for mail. However, the cost of >using ATTMAIL as a uucp gateway is too expensive (at least for any >non-trivial volume). Exactly. Which is why comparing AT&T Mail vs UUNET is like comparing apples and oranges. It would indeed be interesting if AT&T Mail took a look at "bulk discounts" for UUCP traffic, but it's clear with their pricing schedule that that isn't what they had in mind when they envisioned the service. I think UUMAIL can stand on its own merits without such an unwieldy comparison. I mean, it's probably cheaper than FexEding paper tape, too, but you wouldn't say so! -- --- Steve Dyer dyer@harvard.harvard.edu dyer@spdcc.COM aka {ihnp4,harvard,linus,ima,bbn,halleys}!spdcc!dyer
rick@usenix.UUCP (Rick Adams) (04/19/87)
As noted in my previous posting, the Usenix Association has agreed to fund the UUNET project on an experimental basis. As most of you know, the Usenix Association is a non-profit, established, technical association interested in fostering innovation and sharing ideas, software and experience where Unix and Unix like systems and the C programming language are concerned. The Usenix Association is aware of the restrictions on the use of the ARPANET and at no time intended to use the ARPANET nor any other government facility for commercial purposes. UUNET is intended to be a non-profit service for the benefit of Usenix members and others who lack access to mail networks in common use. It will not be in direct competition with existing businesses, but will provide a value added service (electronic mail and news) using existing commercial common carriers. Of course, UUNET will obtain the best possible rates from those carriers through volume and other discounts. Unfortunately some of the potential services mentioned in my earlier posting were not clearly portrayed as concepts requiring final approval. In particular: The Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has not given approval to function as an official arpanet mail gateway. (There was never a plan to gateway anything other than mail.) DARPA has not given approval to connect to "seismo" nor to use the facilities of the Center for Seismic Studies. The UUNET system has the technical capabilities to connect to other networks (including ARPANET) and UUNET intends to pursue links to other networks through the appropriate channels. There will be a small delay (a few weeks) in the start of service, while appropriate facilities are secured. I deeply regret any confusion and misunderstanding that may have occurred because of the incomplete or poorly worded portions of my original announcement. --rick
rick@usenix.UUCP (Rick Adams) (06/25/87)
UUNET General Information
At the Winter 87 USENIX Conference in Washington, DC, the
USENIX Association announced the funding of the UUNET project on
an experimental basis. UUNET became operation in mid-May and
currently has over fifty subscribers.
UUNET is non-profit communications service that provides ac-
cess to USENET news, UUCP mail, and many standards (including the
Internet RFCs and comp.std.unix archives). UUNET is the newest
experimental project of the USENIX Association and has the unpre-
cedented cooperation of DARPA.
For this experiment, DARPA has authorized the use of the
Center for Seismic Studies personnel, resources and communica-
tions facilities. This allows UUNET to house its host computer
at a well-staffed and maintained computer center and to provide
the high quality services necessary for this project. In addi-
tion, DARPA has authorized use of the ARPANET gateway at the
Center on an experimental basis to test the feasibility of mail
forwarding between ARPANET and non-ARPANET sites.
This is the first time a joint project like this has been
initiated and the experiment will be carefully conducted to as-
sure that all ARPANET and Center policies are followed. The
technical results of the experiment will be presented to DARPA
for their consideration of the long term possibilities of contin-
ued interconnection and to USENIX for their funding considera-
tion.
Why Should I Subscribe?
1) Cost: If you are currently paying for long distance calls to
send uucp mail or news, then you should save a substantial
amount of money in communications costs.
2) Reliability: UUNET exists as a communications relay. It will
never be unavailable because some other project needs it.
Nor will it be unavailable because no one has the time to
maintain it. It is run as a dedicated service, not as a
sideline nor as a favor to other sites. The number of in-
termediate hops for news and mail will be greatly reduced,
thereby increasing the reliability.
3) Availability: UUNET will be the best connected news machine in
the country. _A_n_y_o_n_e can be directly connected to a backbone
site and not have to depend on the kindness of others to
redistribute newsgroups that are important to you. Of
course, you may have a full newsfeed, a partial newsfeed, or
none at all. You get what you are willing to pay for. (A
full news feed would cost about $175 per month in connect
time.) UUNET will always carry all newsgroups. This includes
any new news categories that may appear other than those in
the _s_t_a_n_d_a_r_d set.
4) Accessibility: UUNET has been authorized to function as an AR-
PANET mail gateway. Gateways to other networks and mail ser-
vices will also be set up. UUNET can also act as the ARPANET
mail forwarder for your domain.
5) Archives: UUNET will make available for uucp access an exten-
sive archive of publicly available UNIX software. At a
minimum, this will include the latest GNU software, the la-
test Kermit distributions (for many cpu types, not just
UNIX), all the ARPANET RFCs, the latest UUCP map information
(updated daily from the master copy), access to the Simtel-
20 archives, and the netlibd archives at Argonne (EISPACK,
LINPACK, etc). Again, you pay only for the cost of transfer-
ring the software. You will never again have to worry about
how to obtain software that is _a_v_a_i_l_a_b_l_e _f_o_r _p_u_b_l_i_c _f_t_p. It
will be made available for you to uucp.
How Does It Work?
Operationally, UUNET consists of a 10 processor Sequent B21
located at the Center for Seismic Studies in Arlington, VA. The
system is connected to Tymnet via a high-speed leased line. It
can easily handle 25 simultaneous uucico transfers and will be
upgraded to match demand. It is administered by the same people
who are currently administering _s_e_i_s_m_o (everybody's favorite mail
relay...). Operations personnel are on site 24 hours/day Monday
- Friday and someone is always on call on weekends. Availability
and reliability of the system will be high. The system is dedi-
cated to UUNET and has no function other than as a communications
relay. Currently the UUNET machine is tightly coupled to _s_e_i_s_m_o.
This means that having a connection to UUNET is effectively hav-
ing a connection to _s_e_i_s_m_o, i.e. a well connected news and mail
relay. The UUNET system is now fully operational.
To access the UUNET system from within the United States,
you dial a local phone number (from thousands of US cities) and
connect to Tymnet. You are then connected to UUNET via the Tym-
net X.25 public data network. International sites may access
UUNET via direct host-to-host X.25 connection. No special
hardware or software is required (other that the standard UNIX
UUCP programs). The connection to Tymnet is made with an ordi-
nary modem (V.22bis/Bell 212A/Bell 103). Accessing UUNET will be
as easy as with any other UUCP connection.
What Does It Cost?
The cost is $3 per hour of connect time during off-peak
times ($5 per hour from Hawaii). Off-peak times are 6:00 PM to
7:00 AM Monday - Friday and all day Saturday and Sunday. (Your
time zone is used to determine peak or off-peak time, not neces-
sarily the time zone in which the UUNET system is located). Time
is charged by the minute, with a 3 minute minimum per connection.
It is anticipated that most traffic will take place during off-
peak rates. Access is available during peak rate times at sub-
stantially higher rates ($20 - $32 per hour depending on loca-
tion). UUNET can also call you for $20 per hour. There is a
membership charge of $30 per month (less than $1 per day) to cov-
er administrative costs.
Summary
As previously mentioned, USENIX has funded UUNET for an ex-
perimental period. Currently funding exists through November 1.
To offer these services at these prices, UUNET must generate a
large volume of traffic. If a large enough volume of traffic is
seen by the middle of October, USENIX will spin off the UUNET ex-
periment into an independent non-profit organization that will
continue the service with the same basis. If a large enough in-
terest is not shown to allow UUNET to recover its operating
costs, USENIX will regrettably have to discontinue funding.
If your organization has come to depend on electronic mail
and news as part of its daily business, you need a professional
communications service that you can depend on. If you are consid-
ering subscribing to UUNET, please do so soon. If enough early
support is not shown, the service may not be available when you
decide you need it.
For a subscription form or for further information, please contact:
Peter Salus
UUNET/USENIX
P.O. Box 2299
Berkeley, CA 94710
+1 415 528 8649
{seismo,uunet,ucbvax,cbosgd,ames,amdahl}!usenix!uunet-request