Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!lethe!yunexus!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!athene!pcg From: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) Newsgroups: uk.misc,comp.mail.misc Subject: Re: UKC and mail prices Message-ID: Date: 20 Jan 91 19:02:22 GMT References: <1948@odin.cs.hw.ac.uk> <3938@stl.stc.co.uk> <1991Jan16.204326@axion.bt.co.uk> Sender: cho@aber-cs.UUCP Organization: Coleg Prifysgol Cymru Lines: 29 Nntp-Posting-Host: teacho In-reply-to: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk's message of 18 Jan 91 15:28:45 GMT On 18 Jan 91 15:28:45 GMT, pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) said: pcg> [ ... ] UKC overheads are over ten times *their* communication pcg> costs. pcg> Explanation: some say that UKC's yearly budget is over #250,000; pcg> the cost of fetching News [ ... ] well under #10-20,000 [ ... ] Rereading the approximate, unofficial, hypothetical breakdown of UKC's budget, I have noticed that perhaps #100,000 of the #250,000 are (mostly) X.25 communication costs that should not be counted, because they are really (presumably) those of where UKC polls a subscriber instead of being polled, so the bill falls onto UKC instead of the subscriber. So, I would say: the cost of fetching News cannot be more than #10-20,000 per year; the UKC overheads are over #150,000; these also include the overheads for Mail, not just News, but I doubt that they amount to a lot, even if Mail gatewaying is quite a bit more of an effort than News forwarding. The picture is fuzzy, and News overheads are probably more like over five (rather than ten) times News communications costs, but this still seems to be rather expensive; except to well heeled large organizations, that is. -- Piercarlo Grandi | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber.cs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk