Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!crdgw1!sungod!davidsen
From: davidsen@sungod.crd.ge.com (William Davidsen)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: pathalias ignores fast Internet connections
Message-ID: <1444@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Date: 2 Aug 89 15:34:08 GMT
References: <27059@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <3183@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> <261@unmvax.unm.edu>
Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric Corp. R&D, Schenectady, NY
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In article <261@unmvax.unm.edu> mike@unmvax.cs.unm.edu (Michael I. Bushnell) writes:

| Actually, very few *internet* sites pay for such links either...most
| have grants...and that's only for the local link.  The backbone links
| are not paid for directly by anyone...

  Excuse me? Virtually all of the .com and .org sites pay for service.
Take a look at the NYSERNET maps, see GE, Kodak, IBM. That's $30k/year
or more per company (and in some cases there is added billing for
additional sites of one company).

  The last time I looked the BITNET leased line was still paid for by
us, too. This is not to mention internal nets we maintain which might
carry traffic for some routing.

| The upshot is that almost all internet traffic now travels on networks
| supported by NSF, which has stated that use by non-internet sites is
| perfectly acceptable.

  I'd like to see some figures for that, virtually all of the companies
seem to be getting on these little regional networks, and even the
universities are not all getting a free ride. Most of the schools in
upstate NY are on NYSERnet, and while they get a discount, I haven't
heard that they are getting NSF to pay the freight.

  NSF policy is not binding on paying customers. In practice it is
usually permissible and customary for a paying site to carry mail,
because the mail volume is so low compared to the ftp and telnet. Don't
convince yourself that this is written in stone by NSF policy, though,
it's a public service large companies perform, often because the
bitbashers do it without telling anyone.

  Note that AT&T took great pain to disallow "through mail" on its
sites, for all connections including uucp. I think you had better
clarify which sites are bound by the NSF policy, assuming that it is
still in effect (I believe it is).
	bill davidsen		(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM)
  {uunet | philabs}!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me