Xref: utzoo alt.sources:743 news.admin:6048 Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!dfk From: dfk@cwi.nl (Daniel Karrenberg) Newsgroups: alt.sources,news.admin Subject: Re: An apology, and a question (about uucp in Germany) Keywords: EUUG, EUnet, Europe, news Message-ID: <928@sering.cwi.nl> Date: 22 Jun 89 09:55:25 GMT References: <786@redsox.bsw.com> Reply-To: Followup-To: alt.sources Organization: European Unix User Group Lines: 103 A few explanations about the situation in Europe are in order I suppose. This is going to be longer than I'd like! As to my background and "authority": I am currently member of the board of EUUG responsible for EUnet. EUUG is the European Unix User Group (note Unix is not a noun :-) and EUnet is the European part of the worldwide UUCP and netnews network. EUnet has much closer ties with EUUG than USENET or UUCP has with USENIX. As for knowing Germany: I'm German and have been one of the people setting up EUnet in Germany at unido. This was against the declared policy of the department I was working for at the time. So much for my experience with the "usual" USENET way of operation :-). European telecommunications charges are *much* higher than those in the US. Traditionally telecommunications have been provided by state run monopolies at huge profits subsidizing other postal services or even the national budgets. Others have already made this point. These things are changing but *very* slowly. (There is something to be said in fvour of slow change here in order to maintain a reasonable level of service. My impression is that the US have been bitten in some areas by deregulation.) International communications costs are even higher. I pay about .60 US$ a minute to call my girlfriend in Germany from Holland. She lives less than 200 US miles away from me. In central Europe going any significant distance means crossing an international border. Importing netnews from the US is also quite expensive. A minute off peak is about 1.50 US$. X.25 nets are a little less expensive if you call from Europe. X.25 also is checper for intra European international links. However the subscription and equipment costs are higher. So when EUnet started the objective was to share as many international links as possible and to get the news from the US only once. This led to a much more hierarchical organisation than in USENET with strict rules for sharing the costs. This is absolutely needed for fair sharing of the total cost. Beleive me, I would really prefer the "anarchic" way of doing things if it only worked to an acceptable degree of service. As someone else has put it: You are very lucky with your telecomms structure in the US and some large companies "donating" resources. Here we ar bitten by nationalism in Europe. The most internationally minded companies in Europa are the US ones! Back to EUnet: Sites receiving news have to pay a share of the cost to bring them into a given country and transmitting locally generated articles outside the country. If you want an EUnet newsfeed you have to pay up period. fairness to those paying alone should be enough reason! The shares are actually quite fair and claims about high costs for individuals are not always true. In Germany for instance there is a possibility for individual users to form a group and get one subscription for all of them. The only condition is that they are really individuals and not large organisations who should pay a full share and that the group does redistribution internally. I know that the German backbone site is actively helping individuals to organise themselves like this. If anyone can arrange for a newsfeed themselves, fine. Some have mentioned that this is made impossible by EUnet. This is nonsense, how could EUnet stop anyone from doing this? Some mentioned that EUnet would blacklist such sites. This is not true. What we do is make sure that those sites are not using the shared EUnet infrastructure without paying a fair share. Some of them have actually demanded that we pass mail for them at no charge. How could EUnet agree to such a thing while those users paying a share for their service would complain? There have been a few attempts to set up an alternative newsfeed for general use to parts of Europe. So far all of them failed because of the cost. Yes some of them ran for a few months until either the management of the companies being "used" discovered the phone bill, the company went bankrupt (two cases) or it was discovered that communications facilities were actually stolen (I know at least one widely publicised case). As to the numbers in one of the articles there are 35 and not 235 sites getting news in Germany. Because of the high cost it is quite common that EUnet sites use only mail. Of course the more subscriptions the less the shares cost but that's a hen and egg problem! Actually the maximum charge in Germany is US$150/month for all news, and 60$ for 10%. I think this is reasonable for larger organisations because it also includes a help desk and other additional services. If 10 individuals organise themselves and get a group subscription 15$/month should be beareable, shouldn't it? Just to avoid flames: I personally don't like volume charging on news but that's what the German backbone and it's users agreed to do. And charging of the end sites is a national matter. Maybe I should mention as an aside that trans-border moneyflow involves costly conversion over here and we strive to minimise (note British spelling :-) it. Which brings me back to my original point: Conditions are different over here! Please take this into account before making quick judgements and flaming away. As to European users having problems getting the news via EUnet I am always available as EUUG board member to help them find a solution. -- Daniel Karrenberg Future Net: CWI, Amsterdam Oldie Net: mcvax!dfk The Netherlands Because It's There Net: DFK@MCVAX