Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!tinman.cis.ohio-state.edu!bob From: bob@tinman.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) Newsgroups: news.misc Subject: Re: Bitnet service is free (?) Message-ID: Date: 15 Jun 89 04:33:02 GMT References: <594@sys.uea.ac.uk> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Reply-To: Bob Sutterfield Organization: The Ohio State University Dept of Computer & Information Science Lines: 44 In-reply-to: gp@sys.uea.ac.uk's message of 6 Jun 89 15:48:27 GMT In article <594@sys.uea.ac.uk> gp@sys.uea.ac.uk (George Papadopoulos CMP RA) writes: I often here the expression "bitnet service is free of charge" in the sense that if you are a member of a university you don't have to pay anything to register and use it (as opposed, say, to using ARPA or UUCP). But surely someone pays for the provision of this service. So where does the money come from? There are various ways of getting your bits passed from hither to yon, with various attendant tradeoffs. The cheapest way to get connected is likely via a dialup modem attached to any computer that can do the UUCP protocols. This has low initial cost but possibly high incremental cost per unit of service if you must pay long-distance telephone charges. "Connected" in this case means for electronic mail and possibly for news. With the low initial cost comes low bandwidth and limited types of service, and with the high incremental cost comes discouragement to expand its use. This sort of service is in regular daily use on several continents. Rather, as organizations "outgrow" their low-initial-cost connections they often find reasons to move to connections involving higher initial costs. At the other end of the scale would come the purchase of a pair of high-speed modems or fiber drivers, and the installation of a telephone line permanently dedicated to digital service or perhaps an optical fiber or microwave or sattelite link or the like. This has high initial cost but often zero incremental cost per unit of service, once the facility is installed. "Connected" in this case means for all the above, plus all the advantages of universal connectivity. With the higher initial cost and cost of maintenance of the media comes higher bandwidth and more availability. In the IP Internet, file transfers, remote terminals, highly-accurate timekeeping, widely-distributed computing, and a host of other applications present themselves, and are in regular daily use on several continents - often in real-time coordination with users on other continents! In either case, whatever money is required for the installation and maintenance of the connection is provided by the sponsoring institutions at either end of whatever sort of wire is involved. The "free of charge" phrase refers to the incremental cost that is visible to each individual user as a direct effect of his making use of the medium.