Xref: utzoo news.sysadmin:2108 news.admin:4579 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!pprg.unm.edu!hc!ames!amdcad!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!ukc!stl!dww From: dww@stl.stc.co.uk (David Wright) Newsgroups: news.sysadmin,news.admin Subject: Re: i2ack request for news/email supply connection Message-ID: <967@acer.stl.stc.co.uk> Date: 27 Jan 89 00:24:41 GMT References: <1219@altger.UUCP> <361@skep2.ATT.COM> <1236@altger.UUCP> <102@i2ack.UUCP> <9198@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <1989Jan23.183420.7803@utzoo.uucp> Reply-To: "David Wright" Organization: STL,Harlow,UK. Lines: 110 In article <1989Jan23.183420.7803@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: #In article <9198@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> (Don Speck) writes: #>If this is accurate: Why does Eunet have to cost so much? It doesn't, at least not here. We have to pay for comms and our share of the gateway's costs, plus the cost of all mail sent OR received over the Atlantic, but I think we get very good value for money from the UK and European gateways (ukc and mcvax). I think the i2ack problem is that the Italian gateway i2unix that he would have used if he were not 'independant' wanted to make very high charges (maybe they don't have many users, so their costs per user are very high? So they don't have many users...? I don't know why really, this is just a guess). I understand that there are THREE sites in Italy which want to be considered the Italian Gateway, and that all three claim the right to the .it domain. I can believe that - it's typical Italy! Italy is a lovely place, good food, nice people, but it's also DIFFERENT in ways that can really confuse the rest of us! #Don't forget that in Europe, instead of multiple phone companies with #a more-or-less adversary relationship to the government, there is one #phone company per country and it's *part* of the government, usually #part of (shudder) the Post Office. Wrong. When were you last in Europe, Henry? It ain't like that any more. (Actually it never was in Italy - they have dozens of 'phone companies there, though most are very small and local). You have to remember that Europe consists of lots of seperate countries, that are all DIFFERENT. Not so separate as they used to be, but still DIFFERENT. In Germany telecoms is still run by the Bundespost, and similarly the PTT's still rule in some other countries, but the general trend is liberalisation of the telecomms market (yes, it will even happen in Germany). Here in the UK there are three telecoms operating companies, only one of which is government owned, and that by LOCAL government: the Hull City Corporation, BT and Mercury. None is connected with the postal service any more - BT used to be, but is now a private company - my wife even has shares in it. Mercury was set up to compete with BT, which has had a very good effect on BT, it removed the complacency it had when it was still part of the state-run Royal Mail. At present there is still government control in the form of licencing, and no more operating companies will be licenced to operate at present, but it is expected that in the future lots more will be. Hull City Corporation? Not many people know this, but when the telephone monopoly of the Post Office was set up, Hull was allowed to continue to run its own telephone system as a sort of comparison with BT, but only within the city area (BT got the long distance traffic, and had to carry it at reasonable rates). By all accounts the citizens of Hull got a good deal, their phone charges are lower than BT or Mercury and the service is supposed to be good too. So can you use a Trailblazer in Europe? Depends on which country you are in. I think they are legal here now (UK), they aren't in Germany, and I doubt anyone cares in Italy. And the rules will be different yet again in each European country. You don't think that makes sense? Probably not, but that's the way it is. Do you have the same laws in Canada, USA and Mexico? Of course not. Yet they are all part of America. At this site we use PSS (X.25), for which the transmission rates are not too bad (about 50 cents US per MByte for UK traffic I think), however the monthly rental is high. Academic sites are on a network called Janet, which doesn't charge by usage, so they are OK. Smaller companies and the few private 'sites' mostly use modems over 'phone lines, either directly or through a dial-in PSS pad. We get charged for local calls here, though you can get a 'night line' which, for an extra rental, allows free local calls after midnight. So our transmission costs are on average higher than much of the USA with their free local calls in many areas. What's this got to do with Eunet vs. Eucon? Not much, I admit, but I wanted to clear up some misunderstandings about side issues others had raised. In most of Europe, we haven't even noticed the existance of Eucon. As far as I know it is an Italian problem, though because traffic to America etc. goes via other European backbone sites, they are involved too. We do have a 'pay up or do without' rule over here, which is why you can occasionally have problems with mail bouncing if you use an address that the gateway thinks is not a registered site. That's because (except for the Universities) there is no government or large commercial benefactor to pay for large parts of the net - I believe you are luckier in that respect! So if a site doesn't want to pay, and makes it's own arrangements to set up it's own net, good luck to it, but it should not expect the service that it will not pay for. I do think it's sad if a (very small) group of European sites do this, though, as it causes confusion all round. It would be better if they would make their own links into the Eunet too, and pay their share - I'm sure they could find a more reasonable feed if they tried, even if perhaps not in Italy. Having written the above, I realise that as I'm writing from the point of view of a commercial site, what is reasonable to us may look very different to a private network user siting at his home computer. There are two ways to get network service on your own PC or whatever - link to a friendly corporate site as a node within their net, or link to a public access system. In either case it should be possible to use the net without having to pay the sort of charges a large multiuser site pays. But if you can't find such a site locally, life can be difficult. I notice our Italian friend uses an account (blue) at altger (a German site on the EUnet), so presumably he cannot find an Italian public access site. Perhaps what he should really do is set one up, and get enough users to spread those high connection charges, rather than try and start a new net, bringing confusion to both Europe and America. However, anyone who actually wants to set up their own net, with all the problems that brings, has the right to go ahead and even cause confusion if they really want to. P.S. Actually I am sitting at home at present typing at a home computer, but as my link is straight into the net of the company I work for that does not make me a private user. -- Regards, "Are you sure YOUR password won't appear in RTM's next list?" David Wright STL, London Road, Harlow, Essex CM17 9NA, UK dww@stl.stc.co.uk ...uunet!mcvax!ukc!stl!dww PSI%234237100122::DWW