ROODE%BIONET@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU.UUCP (04/13/87)
Telenet just made a press release where they talked about 2,000 hosts on their network worldwide. The ARPANET/Internet can top that easily--there are 4,000 hosts listed in the NIC host table alone, and only the tip of the iceberg is represented there. In comparing costs of Telenet to ARPANET it would not be realistic to look only at a flat cost per packet without taking into account a reasonable cost for maintaining connectivity to a large number of hosts. -------
CERF@A.ISI.EDU.UUCP (04/14/87)
David, I would add to your comments on economics that Telenet is a commercial supplier so its charging policies should be configured to supply a profit. Telenet also has to pay the overhead of sales/marketing/billing/collection which the ARPANET laregly avoids (not entirely, as the DDN folks have to handle tracking of costs for circuits and allocating charges to the funding organizations - but this is on a more coarse scale than the Telenet accounting). Vint