Xref: utzoo news.admin:4583 news.sysadmin:2113 news.config:1112 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!amdcad!sun!pitstop!texsun!convex!uunet!mcvax!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!pcg From: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP (Piercarlo Grandi) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.sysadmin,news.config Subject: Re: French and UK sites wanted for EUcon. Message-ID: <571@aber-cs.UUCP> Date: 27 Jan 89 13:29:10 GMT Reply-To: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) Distribution: eunet,world Organization: Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth (Disclaimer: my statements are purely personal) Lines: 53 In article <56205@pyramid.pyramid.com> csg@pyramid.UUCP (Carl S. Gutekunst) writes: Bill Wisner writes: >So I'll hop on the bandwagon and start flaming them. As far as EUnet is >concerned, EUcon sites should look exactly like normal North American >USENET sites. Making an artificial and arbitrary distinction is revolting. Thoroughly agreed. I thought I explained this. Hey! A wrong explanation is no explanation... The "artificial and arbitrary distinction" is not being made for eucon, it is being made for North American sites. The EUNet backbone is, at present, subsidizing all of us folks here in North American who want to talk with people in Europe. This is ridiculous. What happens really is that european sites are billed for the mail they RECEIVE from the states, because the mcvax/uunet link is paid for entirely by mcvax and dependants in both directions. The american sites are not being subsidised by the EUNET backbone at all; simply, every time a msg is sent from the USA to the EUNET backbone, the european side of the communication, be it sender or receipient, is billed for it (at the very high rates commanded by them). They just aren't willing to subsidize other European sites. Don't be disingenuous! EUcon are prepared, I understand, to pay themselves for the communication costs to mcvax or the national backbones, so that billing of mail to the other party would not be necessary. In other words the real reason for which EUcon is being ostracized is of course not money. Let's now do an exercise in guessing. The EEC and other public and private bodies, in the UK and elsewhere, shell out good money in grants and equipment to help with the costs of linking institutions etc... If there are two competing networks, and one may turn out to be cheaper, EUNET and/or national branches of it would have to split the money, or at the very least the fame. I understand that running a backbone node is not an exercise in profit making, and it does cause its problems, but it is not without its good advantages either. Also, the cost problems that prompted the setup of EUcon are very large for individuals and small institutions or businesses, but they are minuscule for large institutions or businesses, that by chance are also the largest recipients of largesse, and that by chance have an obvious interest in keeping upstarts "out" of the grapevine/circuit. -- Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi | ARPA: pcg%cs.aber.ac.uk@nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcvax!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk