Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!kth!sunic!dkuug!tidk!storm From: storm@texas.dk (Kim F. Storm) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: EUnet, unido and USENET Message-ID: <373@texas.dk> Date: 25 Jul 89 20:59:48 GMT References: <1989Jul18.121524.15171@coms.axis.fr> <8276@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> <1989Jul20.102927.26127@coms.axis.fr> <570.24C7A4BC@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us> Organization: Texas Instruments, Denmark Lines: 126 It seems that the basic disagreement is whether allowing redistribution of news will actually cost the backbone anything. Using the calculations previously posted here (not really related to the real costs and prices), we get the following table ideally showing that everybody get practically free news: Cost to Number of Number of Own Cost get news sub sites sites (ideal) Backbone: 10,000 10 1 0 1st level: 1,000 10 10 0 2nd level: 100 5 100 0 3rd level: 20 4 500 0 4th level: 5 -- 2000 5 5th level: 0 (not worth the troubles to charge them). And of course a site which does not like to have the troubles finding 5-10 sites to feed, can just pay the full charge to its news provider. Its a free world, right? So using this scheme, we would have more than 2500 sites getting news for $5 or less. The big question ($10,000 :-) is how you manage to persuade a site to sign up as 1st or even 2nd level, if it can find somebody who is willing to feed it on the 3rd or 4th level? If it signs up as a 1st level site, it will have to find 10 new sites willing to pay $100 for a news feed from them. Until then, the price for their news feed is $1,000! So instead we may end up with a less balanced hierarchy where the sites paying to the backbone (1st level sites), and their subsites really are subsidicing the rest of the news sites (which may or may not be ok depending on you point of view). Cost to Number of Number of Own Cost get news sub sites sites (real) Backbone: 10,000 3 1 0 1st level: 3,333 5 3 833 2nd level: 500 3 15 200 3rd level: 100 5 45 0 4th level: 20 10 225 0 5th level: 2 -- 2225 And once you have this situation, who is going to change from a lower to a higher level to equal out the costs? There is no organization behind this - remember? Would you ever expect a new site to connect directly to the backbone? And what if a 1st level site goes out of business (because it found itself a free 4th level feed)? Who will then pay 1/3 of the backbone costs? Will the net survive? Of course it will! The backbone just have to find a free 4th level feed as well :-) From a commercial point of view, news is very strange: It is something which is very expensive to get in the first place (from the US to Europe), but once you got it you can duplicate it indefinitely at no cost. Since the initial cost has to be payed somehow (unless you have a rich uncle (Sam?) paying it for you), what better way to do this is there than to say that everybody who get a copy should pay an equal share of the initial costs? Why is this so difficult to understand? Is it unfair? To whom? (Notice that not a single word has been said about EUnet or unido sofar :-) Unfortunately, the rest of this posting will )-: ) But I still does not understand what all the fuzz is about - especially not in Germany: Even the highest subscription fee for the news ($300/month) is only 1/10 of the actual cost for many sites when you include the transmission costs. It is not EUnet or unido who is making the big bucks (if any) on the news - it is the German PTT and government! The backbones in EUnet does put on additional charges on the news feeds to pay for the machines and man-power! We want to run a reliable service for our customers - that costs! Who is suggesting we should (or can) run EUnet for free? Just running the Danish backbone (25 news sites, 80 mail sites, nameserver for .dk, and running a few gateways) is a full-time job, because we want to run a professional service to our customers. Our motto is: The mail must be delivered! and to accomplish that, we have to monitor log files and spool directories, forward or return failed mail, answer a lot of questions about E-mail addressing from the customers, maintain the .dk nameserver information, maintain the Danish uucp maps, play around with sendmail, etc. etc. etc. And we have to pay for our own machines too! Our prices for mail and news are calculated from our expenses (salaries and machines) to run a backbone with this level of service. If somebody can suggest a way we can get the necessary income while allowing our news site to redistribute news to other sites at a significantly lower price than ours, then we would certainly use it! But I cannot see how it will work when the sub sites would not give a single krone to the running of the backbone - please enlighten me! Let me put it this way: With our current tight budget, is it worth the risk of destroying the entire net to allow our own customers to compete directly with us - on much better terms (lower prices) than ourselves. If somebody wants to compete - and they are welcome - then they must do it on equal terms, i.e. buy the "raw materials" at the same cost we do - not buy it on a "1/25 share" from us and then sell it at 1/10 of our price! -- Kim F. Storm storm@texas.dk Tel +45 429 174 00 Texas Instruments, Marielundvej 46E, DK-2730 Herlev, Denmark No news is good news, but nn is better!