Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!alberta!ncc!lyndon
From: lyndon@ncc.Nexus.CA (Lyndon Nerenberg)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: uunet, billing, overload ?
Message-ID: <10352@ncc.Nexus.CA>
Date: 25 Jul 88 06:50:35 GMT
References: <1830@stpstn.UUCP* <2254@epimass.EPI.COM> <568@bnlux0.bnl.gov> <71@jetson.UUCP> <1111@ficc.UUCP> <10348@ncc.Nexus.CA> <838@vsi1.UUCP> <31240@philabs.Philips.Com> <379@uport.UUCP>
Reply-To: lyndon@ncc.nexus.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg)
Organization: Nexus Computing Inc.
Lines: 50

In article <379@uport.UUCP> @uport.UUCP (John Plocher) writes:
[ The "inner" quotes are mine --lyndon ]
*| | | It costs me $4.00 every time their modem answers (3 minute minimum
*| | | charge per call). That's four dollars for every LOGIN FAILED, etc.,
*| | +----
*| | How does uunet determine its billing?
*| +----
*| Uunet does not bill like this.
*| Rick has ESP mabye?
*+----
*
*Not uunet, dammit, Ma Bell.  Long distance on certain carriers with
*their own calling plans.  Ma Bell charges starting whenever the other
*end of the line answers.  She don't care if the modems ever *do* anything,
*she gets her $ out of you.
*
*  -John Plocher

UUNET isn't the problem, at least as far as the above example is
concerned. The problem is I deal with an LD carrier who insists
that any call out of the province is worth at least a buck a
minute, and worth that for at least three minutes, every time.

[ Garry isn't reading this, I hope :-) ]  If you look at the
throughput we can expect from a Trailblazer, we should be able to
bring in comp.all, news.all, gnu.all, bionet.all, and unix-pc.all
for about $300/month. As it turns out, this costs well over $1000/month
due to

	a) AGT's braindamaged billing system (sorry, no alternate
	   carriers in Canada, and I don' think I would want one
	   anyway after what I've read in telecom...) Every failed
	   call (of which there are too many) cost us $4.00
	   exclusive of the uunet charges, which are *trivial*

	b) uunet has fast modems and CPU's, but not fast
	   (enough) disks (watch the delays between 
	   files - 800BPS throuhput during transfers, but
	   closer to 400BPS with file delays. It gets worse
	   with small mail files). [Yes, we're 9600 between
	   the TB's and our Sun, but that's another story]
	   

If anything, uunet is too fair in their billing in that they
don't (cannot) charge the internet sites that use them as an
ftp repository and mail relay. There is such a thing as *too*
well connected (remember ihnp4?)

-- 
VE6BBM   {alberta,pyramid,uunet}!ncc!lyndon  lyndon@Nexus.CA