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

Urs Zurbuchen zu at ethz.UUCP
Sat Jun 24 07:13:54 AEST 1989


In article <6622 at dayton.UUCP> joe at dayton.UUCP (Joseph P. Larson) writes:
>I did some other math.  Our full news feed is about 5 Meg a day.  I think
>this is expanded.  Assuming 50% less phone traffic (compressed, not quite a
>full feed, or what-not), here's what I get:
I also did some math. Using the above numbers for traffic but the
correct charges for phone calls.

Assuming the same numbers as in the original article we would transfer
2.5 MB of compressed news a day at 2400 baud. This gives about 6000
minutes connect time.

One minute connect time to the USA at lowest possible rate is $1. (at
least from Switzerland). Multiply this by 6000 and get $7500.- per
month. Way above the $200.- mentioned in the article which started this
all.
As far as I know the transatlantic link doesn't run at 2400 bps only.
But even at 9600 bps (assuming you have a clear line a get that much
data through), you'd pay about $1900.- a month. You need at least 9
other sites sharing the cost with you to get as low as $200.- And then
local phone charges are not yet included. And they are much higher than
in the USA.

I didn't intend to defend EUUG (or any european backbone). But I think
the problem is with our PTT monopolies and not with EUUG (but I'm not
THAT sure about it).

		...urs


UUCP (dumb): {backbone}!mcvax!cernvax!ethz!zu
    (smart): zu at norad.UUCP    or    netto at norad.UUCP      or     zu at ethz.UUCP
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