owen@hiper.uucp (Owen Thomas) (01/09/91)
Why can't we have the standing charges merged into the usage charges? How many small sites are there? If more than half the UKUUG membership is composed of small sites, then couldn't someone draft a motion for the next UKUUG meeting "recommending" that UKC change their charging practice? (And why do we HAVE to join UKUUG anyway?) Owen Thomas --- Post: Hipersoft, Chiltern Chambers, Caversham, Reading, RG4 7DH, UK. Mail: owen@hiper.co.uk , or, owen@hiper.uucp , or, ...!ukc!hiper!owen Phone: +44 734 476644 Fax: +44 734 461137
igb@fulcrum.bt.co.uk (Ian G Batten) (01/09/91)
In article <1991Jan8.180645.2690@robobar.co.uk> ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo) writes: > undergraduates, and of course British Telecom. That's size in numbers. We pay ``the right amount''. Our fees to Kent are around 20 grand a year. I have people reading from another site over nntp, and we pay the extra whatever for them. ian
pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) (01/13/91)
On 9 Jan 91 12:11:06 GMT, igb@fulcrum.bt.co.uk (Ian G Batten) said: igb> We pay ``the right amount''. Our fees to Kent are around 20 grand igb> a year. I have people reading from another site over nntp, and we igb> pay the extra whatever for them. If you really meant *twenty* (instead of *two*, and a spurious zero) thousand pounds per year, you are insane :-). Getting a full news feed from UUNET by trailbalzer on British Telecom international lines costs less than half that sum (and you *are* BT!), and if you used Mercury :-) instead it would be even lower. You could cut your costs in half and then pass on News to the rest of the UK for free. Please do not reply "but UKC provides me with a service", because this is not true. You have to do all the work yourself, UKC only sells you the right to receive a copy of their news. Period. A pure byte stream. In case you are paying two and not twenty thousand pounds per year, it is still a sizable percentage of the cost of fetching news from UUNET, or any other USa backbone site, by TrailBlazer. You band with two or three sites like you and everybody will bless you. Unless I am totally wrong, the UKC role as providers of news is strictly to receive it from the EUnet backbone and redistribute it, a task that every site that cares to be a feed does. Unless I am totally wrong, UKC is not alone in the UK as a site that feeds many others. Uhmmmm. Let me think... How much is the Computer Board paying UKC to get news from the EUnet backbone? More or less than the cost of a TrailBlazer feed from UUNET? I suspect that any academic site might well submit a *much* lower bid by just getting a feed from UUNET, *without otherwise changing anything of their work*. I still haven't found out what they put into the water in Aberystwyth... -- Piercarlo Grandi | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber.cs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk
sfleming@cs.hw.ac.uk (Stewart T. Fleming) (01/13/91)
In article <PCG.91Jan12194157@teachk.cs.aber.ac.uk>, pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes: |> On 9 Jan 91 12:11:06 GMT, igb@fulcrum.bt.co.uk (Ian G Batten) said: |> |> igb> We pay ``the right amount''. Our fees to Kent are around 20 grand |> igb> a year. I have people reading from another site over nntp, and we |> igb> pay the extra whatever for them. |> |> If you really meant *twenty* (instead of *two*, and a spurious zero) |> thousand pounds per year, you are insane :-). |> Yes. Jim Reid elsewhere gave an estimate of UKCs costs as "not less than 250K p.a." How many sites are there in this country paying 20K per year for a full news feed ? More than, or less than 13 ? |> -- |> Piercarlo Grandi | ARPA: Stewart -- sfleming@cs.hw.ac.uk ...ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!sfleming "Before starting any programming project, try explaining it to your cat."
dww@stl.stc.co.uk (David Wright) (01/14/91)
In the referenced article pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
#igb> We pay ``the right amount''. Our fees to Kent are around 20 grand
#
#If you really meant *twenty* (instead of *two*, and a spurious zero)
#thousand pounds per year, you are insane :-).
I'm sure ibg does mean #20,000 - but look at the subject; that's news PLUS
mail. Large sites like BT (and STL) usually pay a lot more than small
ones because the volume charges for international mail mount up. Most of
us have no interest in running our own world-wide mail systems, at a much
higher cost (one person-year in industry costs a LOT more than #20k).
Locally, we see the best source of cost saving being a direct leased line to
(e.g.) UKC so we can join the Internet properly, with higher fixed costs
but no volume cost. A private user would not find this so practical :-)
If anyone wants to find what ukc's current charge rates are they can simply
mail information@ukc.ac.uk with Subject: charges and they'll get a list.
[I think we all agree that it would be nice if UKC's most recent accounts
were available in the same way!].
Summarising the information - mail costs in 1991 are a standing charge of
#220 ($400) per annum for academic sites, #380 ($700) per annum for
commercial ones. The volume charge is 3p/KByte (#30/MByte) for mail outside
the UK (UK mail is free), plus of course any BT PSS or other charges for the
connection (UK PSS charges work out at about #4 per MByte - a Trailblazer is
a lot cheaper if you take news too).
News costs #360 per annum regardless of volume.
Sites can take news or mail or both. As has been said elsewhere, most
academic sites have the service 'free' because its covered by a block grant;
the figures above apply to those not covered.
The charges apply no matter how a site gets mail/news. In fact sites such
as STL that connect directly to UKC all feed a number of other sites in
return for the privilege (UKC's volume charging system will recognise what
the final site is and bill accordingly - though we do pay extra BT
transport costs to handle other people's mail).
Piercarlo has said that UKC won't treat a group of enthusiasts as a single
site for mail/news purposes. I don't think this is true - I recall a
posting last year from UKC saying that they would. But the group would
have to organise themselves so they appeared as a single address for mail,
news and billing - if UKC had to bill or route things differently for each
member then they would be justified in charging for each one too.
So if anyone wants to form a club for mail/news why not go ahead and do so,
instead of moaning that you can't? You'd have to organise your own mail
routing internal to the club of course, but that's what most sites with
more than one computer do anyway. Obviously you'll need to contact UKC
first to confirm that I'm right about their agreeing, but I'd be very
suprised if they won't so long as its not a trick to get cheap connections
for commercial organisations and so long as the club has a single email
address and a single billing point. After all some of the existing UK
public access sites work almost like this and nobody has suggested that
they are not allowed.
Regards, David Wright STL, London Road, Harlow, Essex CM17 9NA, UK
dww@stl.stc.co.uk <or> ...uunet!mcsun!ukc!stl!dww <or> PSI%234237100122::DWW
"Do not speak of what men deserve. For we each of us deserve everything,
every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead Kings, and we each
of us deserve nothing, not a mouthfull of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten
while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for
the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man
earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of *deserving*, of *earning*, and
you will begin to be able to think."
Odo, The Prison Letters (U.LeGuin, The Dispossessed)ngse18@castle.ed.ac.uk (J R Evans) (01/14/91)
dww@stl.stc.co.uk (David Wright) posted a useful summary of ukc's current charges; allow me to cross a few t's which might otherwise lead to misunderstanding ... >Sites can take news or mail or both. But if they take news, they must still pay the standing charge for UKnet registration. Net minimum cost for news alone is #580 per annum, to an academic site not covered by the block grant. > As has been said elsewhere, most >academic sites have the service 'free' because its covered by a block grant; >the figures above apply to those not covered. Replace 'most' by 'some'. I don't have the ukc figures in front of me, but I recall that about half of current academic subscribers are covered by the block grant. There is a lot of the academic and research community without ukc mail or news. It seems a reasonable assumption that any site would register for mail, at least, if this were free of cost to them, so it is unlikely that many unregistered sites are covered by the block grant. I don't know whether the cost of news to eligible sites is covered by the block grant - I'm under the impression even they must pay extra. Can anyone enlighten us? The source of my information is ukc's current information pack - I'm trying to get a feed set up to my home site. Russ Evans BGS Edinburgh
dww@stl.stc.co.uk (David Wright) (01/16/91)
In the referenced article jim@cs.strath.ac.uk (Jim Reid) writes:
#BT do indeed pay UKC around 20K p.a. This is for several news feeds
#plus a *lot* of mail. [Nobody pays "20K per year for a full news
#feed".] Unlike some other sites, BT is a good net citizen.
#
#I doubt if there is anyone else that pays UKC anything like that
#amount of money for news and mail. STC might be nearest, but I'd guess
#their bill is around 3-4,000 quid.
The bill for STC Technology (STL) alone must be at least that (I forget the
exact figures but anyway they'd be confidential). WE get/send a *LOT* of
mail. Then there's STC Telecomms, and then there are several ICL sites,
most of whom get their news and some their mail via us, but are all
independently registered, as indeed they should be. So STC as it was back
in October probably paid even more than BT. (For those who don't know what
changed in November - ICL was sold to Fujitsu). However when you consider
that we pay vastly larger sums to BT and Mercury for 'phone and data comms
just within the UK the fees from UKC start to look very reasonable.
Of course the account is different for smaller users. But even for them BT's
comms charges are likely to exceed UKC's if they take a full news feed and
are more than a local call away from a feed, (a full local-call feed by
Trailblazer costs some $500 pa in 'phone charges - local calls aren't free
in the UK - and long distance calls or PSS can put that up to over $5000 pa).
Thinking about this reminds me of the days when one of the main mail links
US---UK was the 1200 baud modem at the back of our UNIX 4.1 VAX780 with
which we used to call ittvax. The link wasn't supposed to be for anyone
else, as it cost STL expensive phone calls, but people we were working with
were allowed to use it. We seemed to have a lot of friends in those days :-)
Like ittvax (and soon our 780) those days are gone. Now we need a reliable
mail and news system which won't disappear if some generous sponsor is hit
by budget cuts - which for commercial sites means a service we pay for.
Regards, "None shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity"
David Wright STL, London Road, Harlow, Essex CM17 9NA, UK
dww@stl.stc.co.uk <or> ...uunet!mcsun!ukc!stl!dww <or> PSI%234237100122::DWW
<or> /g=David/s=Wright/org=STC Technology Ltd/prmd=STC plc/admd=Gold 400/co=GBpcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) (01/18/91)
On 16 Jan 91 20:43:26 GMT, ntitley@axion.bt.co.uk (Nigel Titley) said: ntitley> I do not have, and never have had cause to complain at UKCs ntitley> charging. I feel that it is cheap at the price. BT may afford to feel that it is cheap. Oh yes. I am still perplexed that for some reason the UKC overheads are over ten times *their* communication costs. Explanation: some say that UKC's yearly budget is over #250,000; the cost of fetching News (say something between 500MB-1GB per year depending on what you want to include) from UUNET by TrailBlazer is, depending on compression and other factors, well under #10-20,000 (approx. 1,000 chars second, depending on compression 250-500MB per year transferred, about 7,000 minutes on the phone per year at worst); it would quite a bit cheaper if the USA site were calling and then reimbursed for the AT&T bills, because the price per minute from the other side of the Pond is much lower. As to e-mail, I would be exceedingly surprised if e-mail to/from the UK commercial sites (the academic ones use the subsidized Internet gateway) reached a volume comparable to that of News; while we are discussing the News here, the #250,000 mentioned above include mail. Now I am prepared to believe that mail has greater fixed costs than News, but it probably has much smaller communication costs, because of possibly lower volume. I'd like to see the traffic statistics and the budgets of UKC vs. those of uk.ac.nsfnet-relay and UUNET; I surmise that it would be instructive. Note that the cost of getting News from the USA is *shared* with every other country in Europe, so that probably the #10,000-20,000 above have to be scaled significantly. All in all I think that the transmission costs of UKC are well under #20,000 (if not, they are insane). Their total budget is ten times that, at least. Uhmmm. Uhmmmmm. Do they provide a value added News "service", apart from being a pipe between UUNET and the first echelon of News sites in the UK? Not that I am aware of. They are just a conduit with an overhead of the order of 1000% overhead. Impressive. Back to the BT situation: they get their News feed from UKC and it is redistributed, out of their good will, to 22 sites, each of whom pays UKC (not BT!) their #600 per annum standing charge for News. If BT got the feed direct from UUNET, instead of via mcsun and ukc, or even from one of the several sites in the USA that would be happy to feed direct an European site (I have received some generous offers), they would be spending the same or less money, and they would be able to redistribute News for *free* to other sites in this country, or to charge much less than UKC and still recover their money. Now you say: but hidden here are the costs BT bears to redistribute News internally and externally, like support staff time and machine resources. Yes, but BT evidently are prepared to bear those costs for their own use of News, and probably passing it on may be a bother but probably just a little extra. USENET spirit! "I carry your traffic, you carry my traffic", and some are more generous than others. UKC make the overheads explicit, by having the rest of the UK pay for their support staff and machine resources, and fairly lavish ones at that (some largish CS departments would love to be able to afford three full time support people PLUS clerical staff for running their *dozens* of workstations and servers!). -- Piercarlo Grandi | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber.cs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk
pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) (01/21/91)
On 18 Jan 91 15:28:45 GMT, pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) said: pcg> [ ... ] UKC overheads are over ten times *their* communication pcg> costs. pcg> Explanation: some say that UKC's yearly budget is over #250,000; pcg> the cost of fetching News [ ... ] well under #10-20,000 [ ... ] Rereading the approximate, unofficial, hypothetical breakdown of UKC's budget, I have noticed that perhaps #100,000 of the #250,000 are (mostly) X.25 communication costs that should not be counted, because they are really (presumably) those of where UKC polls a subscriber instead of being polled, so the bill falls onto UKC instead of the subscriber. So, I would say: the cost of fetching News cannot be more than #10-20,000 per year; the UKC overheads are over #150,000; these also include the overheads for Mail, not just News, but I doubt that they amount to a lot, even if Mail gatewaying is quite a bit more of an effort than News forwarding. The picture is fuzzy, and News overheads are probably more like over five (rather than ten) times News communications costs, but this still seems to be rather expensive; except to well heeled large organizations, that is. -- Piercarlo Grandi | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber.cs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk
pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) (01/22/91)
I think that for fairness this should be circulated also in uk.misc, where the discussion originated. This is a verbatim reproduction: From venta@otello.sublink.org Mon Jan 21 18:46:32 1991 From: venta@otello.sublink.org (Paolo Ventafridda) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains,comp.mail.uucp Subject: UKC and mail prices: DISCLAIMER- README Date: 16 Jan 91 12:13:50 GMT Organization: Consorzio Telematix, Milano - Italy PLEASE, anyone willing to quote, report, reply to Piercarlo's articles, should read this and possibly report it as well. I've been mentioned inside an article without knowing, so THIS is my disclaimer. (sorry guys) In article <PCG.91Jan14204408@odin.cs.aber.ac.uk>, pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes: > Some people have expressed skepticism. Well, here is a digest of an > exchange of one year agho on the subject. I have not deleted or mended > any part of the text, just reflown it here and there to enhance > readability. I understand that the situation has improved a very little > bit in the meantime. [.....etc.....] Articles included (at least mine) are exactly 2 years old, not just one. The situation has changed many times since then, not always getting better. 1- I *no *longer want to be involved in discussions about the monopoly of eunet or whatever european network. Please let me OUT of these public discussions, they don't lead to anything. I am not willing to be pointed at like the pioneer of any kind of 'revolution'. All i can say is that at that time i was younger and stupid enough to start such a debate. I wouldn't do it again anyway. 2- I had enough troubles and already paid for what i consider stupid youth's mistakes. Again, let me out of this discussion. 3- Finally, please do not cope my name with Sublink Network. Sublink is now a real organization, i'm just a host, i'm not president, chairman or whatever. Sublink officially exists since september 1989; those articles are dated january 89. That sublink is *very different from the one i'm on now. 4- I can't speak for sublink now, and those articles of mine can't speak for the 'official' sublink as well. Sincerely, Paolo Ventafridda -- Piercarlo Grandi | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber.cs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk