peterr@utcsrgv.UUCP (Peter Rowley) (07/31/83)
From literature and a presentation given at the Toronto USENIX, my
impression is that CSNET is quite similar to the proposed Usenet Inc., in
a form with as little bureaucracy as possible, and with non-profit status.
Some excerpts from "csnet news", no. 1 (may 83):
"CSNET was established in 1981 with a 5 year grant from the National Science
Foundation. From the beginning, the goal of the project has been to create
an independent network, fully supported by membership dues and service fees.
With this in mind, NSF has adopted a schedule of dues and fees for 1983,
and the Coordination and Information Centre (CIC) has developed models of
expected service charges. ...
CSNET dues support software maintenance and development, hardware, tech.
staff, and other expenses associated with shared resources such as the
PhoneNet relays, the Name Server facility, and the CIC. Dues also defray
the costs of documentation, network management, and network governance
activities. Each member of CSNET is required to pay yearly dues to
support CSNET operation."
Here are the current dues:
Industrial: $30K/yr Government: $10K/yr Univ: $5K/yr
The two relays mentioned are at Rand Corp. in Santa Monica and U. Delaware.
A PhoneNet site dials into the closest relay, except where a site has been
moved to the other relay for load balancing. An X25Net (Telenet) site
accesses CSNet by buying special hardware from Telenet, getting X.25/TCP-IP
sw from Purdue (runs only on BSD) and paying Telenet $1000/mo. for a 4800 baud
line, packet charges not included. The break-even point for phone/telenet is
about $22K/yr.
PhoneNet sites pay service fees too:
Day Evening/Night
Dial-out .80 .40
Dial-in .10 .10
These are on top of any telco charges and are in terms of $/connect-minute.
The CSNet model predicts service fees of between $125 and $625 a year for
light-heavy PhoneNet mail users (note that there is no news). X25 service
fees have not been established yet.
All the details can't be gone into in the space of a news article, but
it appears that CSNET provides the reliable mail and name server services
desired, and could handle news.
The bureaucracy involved is the 6 member management committee, which appears
to be responsible to the NSF, and the >=4 member staff of the CIC, located at
BBN in Cambridge Mass.
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Comment:
It appears that a lot of work has gone into setting CSNET up, together
with a good deal of money from the NSF. For this to happen again with USENet
would probably require private, for-profit funding (public funders would say
"Use CSNET"), resulting in a for-profit organization probably more expensive
than CSNET.
The obvious statement to make is that sites who want a "USENet Inc." should
cough up the CSNET dues and join that network, then help/urge them to get news
going. Note that this would not satisfy the user-pay advocates, as univ's
(and government sites) get a break on dues.
I would suggest, however, that USENet as it is, with no bureaucracy at all,
is a valuable thing to preserve. It has an active, informed community capable
of contributing software and manpower to the net. If a new news/mail pkg is
created, no bureaucracy need be convinced of its worth... all that must be
done is to post it to net.sources. Those who feel it can be used, in
the given environment (with all requisite compatability problems), may use
it. This seems as democratic as one could hope for.
peter rowley, U. Toronto CSRG
{cornell,watmath,ihnp4,floyd,allegra,utzoo,uw-beaver}!utcsrgv!peterr
or {cwruecmp,duke,linus,lsuc,research}!utzoo!utcsrgv!peterr