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From: rick@seismo.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.misc,comp.org.usenix
Subject: Re: UUNET Communications Service Available
Message-ID: <43573@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV>
Date: Wed, 15-Apr-87 14:51:23 EST
Article-I.D.: beno.43573
Posted: Wed Apr 15 14:51:23 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 17-Apr-87 03:35:42 EST
References: <43389@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> <45745@seismo.CSS.GOV>
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Organization: Center for Seismic Studies, Arlington, VA
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Xref: utgpu news.misc:258 comp.org.usenix:118
Summary: clarification on ATTMAIL pricing

In the original posting I said that using ATTMAIL cost about $30 per
hour.  Some people have taken exception to that figure.

Since ATTMAIL charges by 7500 character chunks instead of hourly, it
was necessary to convert to similar units to make any comparison. Since
the UUNET pricing and the CSNET pricing are by the hour, I converted
the ATTMAIL price to an hourly basis.

ATTMAIL does not charge by connection time. However, since we are talking
about transferring data and not on-line composition, I think the $30
per hour is valid for comparison purposes.

Figuring a cost of 80 cents to transfer a 7500 byte message and a
throughput of 800 baud on a 1200 baud modem (a reasonable throughput
according to most systems log files), we get

	800 baud -> 80 characters per second -> 288,000 characters per hour.
	288,000 / 7500 = 38.4 message chunks * 80 cents per chunk =
	$30.72

So, the effective price of sending data for 1 hour through ATTMAIL is
actually in excess of the $30 per hour I mentioned. (If you use 2400
baud instead of 1200 baud, the hourly cost is correspondingly higher)
Note that this is a best case. If you message was only 500 bytes, you would
still pay the 80 cents.

To work it the other way, to send a 7500 character message through
UUNET would be:

	(7500 character message + 800 character header) / 288,000
	characters per hour * $3 per hour = 8.6 cents to send your
	80 cent message.
	Actually it could be as high as 15 cents because we charge a 3
	minute minimum.

Or, to convert both pricing schemes using the above assumptions,
UUNET would be slightly over 1 cent per 1000 characters, while ATTMAIL
would be over 10 cents per 1000 characters.

ATTMAIL excels at offering a telex service and in dealing with people
who do not have a dedicated Unix system for mail. However, the cost of
using ATTMAIL as a uucp gateway is too expensive (at least for any
non-trivial volume).

---rick