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From: dick@ucsfcca.UUCP (Dick Karpinski)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Cost of news
Message-ID: <510@ucsfcca.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 7-May-86 23:15:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucsfcca.510
Posted: Wed May  7 23:15:10 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 11-May-86 04:24:00 EDT
References: <510@uel>
Reply-To: dick@ucsfcca.UUCP (Dick Karpinski)
Organization: UCSF Computer Center
Lines: 53
Summary: $25 - 200/ month/ feed

I was moved to contact Telenet about bulk discounts etc. by a
net.usenix article requesting proposals for experimental projects.
By all measures, the cheapest feed is clearly PC Pursuit at a mere
$25 per month per feeder.  I believe that they require that the
purchaser of services be an individual, not a company.  However,
the availability of 13 hours/day of 1200 bps connection makes it
cheap for an individual with their own Unix system to scarf up the
megabyte or so of a full news feed and spit it out to at least two
other sites each nite.  Probably there are folks here who could
arrange to automate most of the task.  I believe that for now, the
service is limited to local calls in 20 large cities across the
country.  Expansions of the area, but not the fee are said to be
in the works.  Would this idea help to contain the cost, system
wide, of transmitting the news?

For commercial sites without willing home Unix users, another
avenue is potentially realizable for a large enough group of
cooperating sites (about 100).  At a guaranteed minimum usage of
$5k per month, off hours Telenet time (6pm to 7am + weekends) can
be purchased for about $1.17 per hour.  The other end may need to
have gear rented from Telenet such that the effective rate is
about double.  This permits a much wider range of locations from
which and to which calls can be placed (compared to PC Pursuit).
At saturation (four 1-megabyte feeds per port per nite) the cost
(neglecting billing/charging hassles) of this system would be
less than $200/mo/recipient.  Would this idea help to contain the
cost, system wide, of transmitting the news?

I got tired of all the complaints about the high cost of keeping
the net in operation and decided to try to do a little to change
that for the better.  However, I do not have much idea whether
there are many US sites for whom these figures would represent
much improvement.  Do you?  Please let me know if my naivete has
caused me to overlook some obvious problem.  Otherwise, please
explain to me (or to the net?) what else is needed to improve 
the net.news costs, beyond banding together to employ one of
these approaches.

Stargate will, if all goes well, reduce the net.news transmission
costs substantially, by using satelite broadcasting for a large
fraction of the daily volume.  Till then, and after then if news
costs for the rest are still of concern, these approaches might
have some value.  Even if Stargate carried all the news, a large
volume of mail could justify some of this.  Any comments??

Dick

-- 

Dick Karpinski    Manager of Unix Services, UCSF Computer Center
UUCP: ...!ucbvax!ucsfcgl!cca.ucsf!dick   (415) 476-4529 (12-7)
BITNET: dick@ucsfcca   Compuserve: 70215,1277  Telemail: RKarpinski
USPS: U-76 UCSF, San Francisco, CA 94143