An apology, and a question (about uucp in Germany)

[Philip Peake]

In article <786 at redsox.bsw.com>, campbell at redsox.bsw.com (Larry Campbell) writes:
> Now, my question (and I'd prefer to get answers only from people in Germany,
> who know, rather than people in the US, who are guessing).  What is going on
> in Germany that makes getting a news feed so unbelievably expensive?  I am
> really curious about this.  One of the followups to the original posting
> said:
> 
> > This here is germany not USA. We have no chance to join the UseNet without
> > having major costs. As you may have followed the discussion in news.admin
> > you know that we have a very difficult position here.
> > I'm a student too and I have around $200 costs per month to join UseNet as
> > an UNOFFICIAL host not know by unido.
> > For every KB mail I received it's charged for $0.70.
> 
> I really don't understand this.  Who do you have to pay the $200 to?
> In the US, you just find a local Usenet site with a friendly system
> administrator and set up a uucp link.  If it's a local call, it's free.
> What prevents you from doing that in Germany?  Even if local calls
> aren't free, $200/month seems hard to believe (I suspect that, with
> decent modems, I could get a full feed from California for less than
> that, at night time rates).
> 
> I could maybe understand people chipping in to defray the costs of the
> transatlantic traffic, but $200 per month per site??  There are presently
> 235 sites listed in the German uucp map;  $200 x 235 = $47,000, and I
> can NOT believe that it costs $47,000 per month just to get Usenet
> traffic across the ocean!!

Ok, so you asked for responses only from Germany, but since they are part
of EUnet, I can tell you how EUnet is SUPPOSED to operate.

			EUnet is NOT USENET.
			^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Remember that phrase, it is important.
Having seen the problems that USENET has, europe wanted to avoid the same
problems. So, we have a much more formal structure here. The important
points to remember are:

1)	No one pays out bills for us - no kind DEC or IBM passing on
	mail or NEWS free of charge.

2)	Communications costs are MUCH higher than in the USA.
	When you cross a state border in the US, your 'phone charges
	dont suddely multiply by at leat ten times !

3)	NEWS and mail are treated seperately.

To even CONNECT to the network, you are supposed to be a member of the EUUG.
This will cost something different in each country.

There is normally an annual connection fee to cover the administrative
costs of adding a new site to the backbone.
Mail is charged on a per Kb basis - until recently we (europeans) were
paying the cost of transporting mail sent from the US to europe, as well
as paying for transport costs for mail we sent - now that things are better
organised (thanks to UUNET), this is changing.

NEWS is charged seperately - normally on a fixed cost per year - you pay
your own transport between your backbone and your site.

Looking at the German uucp map and saying that there are x sites doesn't
imply that all x receive news - in fact the numbers are quite small - in france
we are talking about something like 10 - 15 sites.

The cost of shipping NEWS (the USENET part) accross the Atlantic is divided
between these OFFICIAL sites.

This is where it becones interesting - apparently our German friend is an
UNOFFICIAL site - which basically means someone is feeding him NEWS
without declaring it - THIS IS ANTI-SOCIAL - the rest of us are paying
more than we need to.

One of the perenial complaints is that NEWS is too expensive here - no wonder
it is expensive if it is only a small percentage of those actually using
it who pay !

EUnet runs a very profesional service, it is reliable and (just about)
fully domain based - we don't have problems routing our mail, mail
just works ! USENET is just ONE of the networks connected to EUnet,
it does not exist in europe, please don't try applying the same rules.

If anyone connected to EUnet wants a news feed it is FREE, but if they
want the HUGE VOLUME of USENET NEWS then they have to participate
in the costs of getting it here, and distributing it around europe.

Philip