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From: lamy@cs.toronto.edu (Jean-Francois Lamy)
Subject: Re: Is it time for a "uunet-north"?
Message-ID: <90Feb3.132842est.4566@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
References: <25CA554B.1357@telly.on.ca> <1990Feb3.104438.8697@me.toronto.edu> <90Feb3.111544est.4570@neat.cs.toronto.edu> <1990Feb3.125056.10329@me.toronto.edu>
Distribution: ont
Date: 3 Feb 90 18:29:15 GMT
Lines: 43

eastick@me.utoronto.ca (Doug Eastick) writes:

[ Concerning ONET connection costs, which are only worth discussing only
  if uunetnorth wants to provide Internet connections to the outside, or
  if they want to set-up an Internet connection for themselves ]

>Currently $18k/year and I suspect it will rise.

There is the very real question of "where do you go to get an Internet
connection".  The ONET fee compares very favourably to how much it would cost
you to tap in directly to NYSERNET, or another American regional net.  CSRI
used to spend 60000$ per annum to get Internet access from CSNET/X25Net, as a
quick reminder (now you know who was paying for ...!{utcsri,utai}!foo.bar.edu
all those years).  NSFNET won't even talk to you (soon they won't even talk to
ONET, their policy being to talk only to their counterpart national backbones
-- CAnet in Canada -- which is still in nascent state).  Networking is *not* a
trivial task, and even in the presence of better subsidies and cheaper
communication costs the US networks are still forced to charge a bundle to
provide the required infrastructure.  One reason the ONET fee will go up is
that it will more or less be forced into CAnet -- see discussion about NSFnet
above -- and CAnet, thanks to Canadian politics, will be providing service to
all 10 provinces, with predictable cost/revenue discrepencies)

For the ONET you get the leased line and an ethernet port in your building.
The router is actually amortized over a small positive number of years.  The
current "proper" way of building networks involves using homogeneous,
dedicated equipment with a clear delineation between what the network provides
(packet routing) and what the customer gets (a place to plug in a wire).
Cobbling up something where say the packets for UWO go through a
general-purpose machine at Waterloo would introduce both logistical problems
because of the heterogeneity, and sharply diminish predictability when
non-dedicated machines get loaded up.

I'm afraid the only real way to build regional networks circa 1990 is to do
it the ONET way.

>I thought UTCS's link to the NSFnet was 56k? not 32k.

Nope, sad as it may be.  The remaining bandwidth is paid for and used by
Netnorth.

Jean-Francois Lamy               lamy@cs.utoronto.ca, uunet!cs.utoronto.ca!lamy
Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4