HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: grb@rbyte.proteus.qc.ca (G. Randolph Bickerton)
Newsgroups: news.misc,comp.misc,news.admin.misc,alt.folklore.computers,misc.misc
Subject: Re: How is the Net financed and what does it cost?
Date: 8 Nov 92 03:27:13 GMT
Organization: Right Byte Industries, Ville St-Laurent Quebec Canada

xyzzy@mertwig.UUCP (Daniel Drucker) writes:

> > Someday we'll probably see network usage metered by packet similar to
> > the way electricity is packaged, but that's some time off.  A better
> > solution would be to charge similar to the way phone services are
> > charged (a flat or cheap rate for local service, more for long
> > distance) but the accounting would be pretty hard so it's unlikely
> > that such a technique will be used.
> 
> Like telephone?
> I don't want to have to pay more to telnet farther. Thats plain stupid.
> The whole point of the net is a cyberspace where distance is meaningless.
> 
> Daniel Max P. Drucker
> 
> =============== mertwig!xyzzy@jaflrn.uucp ==========================
> #define slogan_1 Don't pick on me, I'm only 14.
> #define slogan_2  Hey! Lets port it to COBOL!
> 
> Difficulty! It's the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!
> Hi, I'm a .sig virus! Copy me into your .sig and spread the fun!
> =========== uupsi!utoday!jaflrn!mertwig!xyzzy ====================== 

In an earlier response to this overall question someone's signature stated 
that "there is no such thing as a free lunch!" .  As for the internet there 
is just a lot of "charity".  WE all share the net because some larger 
organizations ( academic, corporate, government etc) have the hardware in 
place; pay for the major transmission costs and let the little guy 
piggyback.

G. Randolph Bickerton              GRB@rbyte.proteus.qc.ca
P.O. Box 751                       TEL (514)744-5524
Pte-Claire Dorval, PQ  H9S 2L5     FAX (514)748-8109
Xref: sparky news.misc:1853 comp.misc:4258 news.admin.misc:277 alt.folklore.computers:15936 misc.misc:3732
From: bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton)
Newsgroups: news.misc,comp.misc,news.admin.misc,alt.folklore.computers,misc.misc
Subject: Re: How is the Net financed and what does it cost?
Date: 7 Nov 92 21:28:37 GMT
Organization: Intel Corp., Chandler, Arizona
NNTP-Posting-Host: alfalfa.intel.com

In article <1dhc62INN2de@chnews.intel.com> bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
>reports memory utilization (see getresources(3)) in units
				 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
				 dickhead means getrusage(2)...

				--Blair
				  "Oh, well, another $2.2million
				   down the net.tubes..."
Lines: 10
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 92 08:58:04 MST
From: gritton@alaska.et.byu.edu (Jamie Gritton)
Organization: Brigham Young University, Provo UT USA
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Mock election, anyone?
Reply-To: gritton@byu.edu
Distribution: usa

sensei@dojo.mi.org (the Maniak) writes:

> Is anyone on the Internet/Usenet planning on holding some sort of "mock
> election", where we get to email/telnet somewhere and cast a mock vote
> for U.S. president?

Knowing (guessing) the political makeup of the net people, it would
probably be a tie between the Libertarian and Socialist candidates.
--
James Gritton - gritton@byu.edu - I disclaim
Xref: sparky news.misc:1844 comp.misc:4231 news.admin.misc:261 alt.folklore.computers:15878 misc.misc:3717
From: chris@visionware.co.uk (Chris Davies)
Newsgroups: news.misc,comp.misc,news.admin.misc,alt.folklore.computers,misc.misc
Subject: Re: How is the Net financed and what does it cost?
Date: 6 Nov 92 10:46:58 GMT
Organization: VisionWare Ltd., Leeds, UK
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

Michael Hauben (hauben@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu) wrote:
:      Whenever I post a message to Usenet using Pnews, I see a
: message persuading me NOT to post because of the expense that is
: bourn by the funders of the Networks. Is this the truth? (Or is
: this from the old days of telephone connections?)

Yes, it can be true.  Just because your site is connected into the
Internet by a piece of leased line doesn't mean that we all are.
Unfortunately we (still) get our news feed (and email, too) over a
dialup connection, and over here in Europe there aren't many places
where you can get free phone calls.

:      1) How are the networks (Internet, NSFNet, Regional Net-
: works, Usenet, UUCPnet, etc) financed? Who pays for the upkeep
: and maintenance?

Usenet isn't a network.  (There's another posting in news.answers, I
think, which tries to explain what Usenet is and isn't, so I won't do
that here.)

:      2) What are the costs to send electronic mail messages and
: data packets? And are there other costs?

This depends on what colour your piece of string is.  I'll give you our
details by email - if you want them.

Chris
--
            VISIONWARE LTD, 57 Cardigan Lane, LEEDS LS4 2LE, England
  Tel +44 532 788858 x238.  Fax +44 532 304676.  Email chris@visionware.co.uk
---------- "VisionWare:   The home of DOS/SQL/UNIX/X/VMS integration" ---------
Xref: sparky news.misc:1845 comp.misc:4233 news.admin.misc:262 alt.folklore.computers:15884 misc.misc:3718
From: xyzzy@mertwig.UUCP (Daniel Drucker)
Newsgroups: news.misc,comp.misc,news.admin.misc,alt.folklore.computers,misc.misc
Subject: Re: How is the Net financed and what does it cost?
Date: Thu, 05 Nov 92 21:14:14 EST
Organization: Odd Parity Hacker's Group

> Someday we'll probably see network usage metered by packet similar to
> the way electricity is packaged, but that's some time off.  A better
> solution would be to charge similar to the way phone services are
> charged (a flat or cheap rate for local service, more for long
> distance) but the accounting would be pretty hard so it's unlikely
> that such a technique will be used.

Like telephone?
I don't want to have to pay more to telnet farther. Thats plain stupid.
The whole point of the net is a cyberspace where distance is meaningless.

Daniel Max P. Drucker

=============== mertwig!xyzzy@jaflrn.uucp ==========================
#define slogan_1 Don't pick on me, I'm only 14.
#define slogan_2  Hey! Lets port it to COBOL!

Difficulty! It's the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!
Hi, I'm a .sig virus! Copy me into your .sig and spread the fun!
=========== uupsi!utoday!jaflrn!mertwig!xyzzy ====================== 
Newsgroups: news.misc,comp.misc,news.admin.misc,alt.folklore.computers,misc.misc
From: chriss@sam.amgen.com (Chris Silvester)
Subject: Re: How is the Net financed and what does it cost?
Organization: Amgen
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 18:33:12 GMT

In article <1992Nov4.181923.26835@wixer.cactus.org>, rhodesia@wixer.cactus.org (Felix S. Gallo) writes:
>
> i.e. that 100MB you're using up is 1/104th of the total usefulness of
> the uber-drive's lifetime; assuming that you use up 100MB of a uber-drive,
> and assuming that the uber-drive was bought retail at today's prices as
> an aggregate of 2.1 gig scsi shoeboxes from the Computer Shopper [*],
> your article would cost $1.50 a megabyte to store, you'd be storing
> it for 1/104th the lifetime of the device, and the quantity of your
> megabytage would be 100.
> 
> 100 * 1/104 * 1.50 = 1.442307693 (approx)
> 
> so, assuming that my figures are close to correct, your posting a 1k article
> would cost the net approximately eight packets of Top Ramen (6/$1.00) plus
> enough change for some cheap gum.
>
> If someone finds ridiculously stupid errors in my article, feel free to
> point them out gently on the net and flame me in e-mail. :)
> 
> Felix

I don't know the specifics of the net, but you're logic seems sound.  One
point you fail to mention though...if everyone in the world starts posting
lots of meaningless articles simply because it's cheap to do so, the combined
cost would quickly become quite significant...

$.02

Chris S.
From: msb@sq.sq.com (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: Mock election, anyone?
Date: 9 Nov 92 00:18:58 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, Canada

> > > Is anyone on the Internet/Usenet planning on holding some sort
> > > of "mock election", where we get to email/telnet somewhere and
> > > cast a mock vote for U.S. president?
> 
> > Knowing (guessing) the political makeup of the net people, it would
> > probably be a tie between the Libertarian and Socialist candidates.
> 
> Someone actually did do a poll, it wound up being (in order) Clinton,
> Marrou, Perot, Bush, Kibo, and downward from there.

However, even for a Usenet poll, the methodology was flawed.  The
poll question listed four "major party candidates" by name, which
hardly corresponded with the real world.  This is a pity; it would
actually have been interesting to see how the Libertarians' Marrou
did on an *unbiased* poll on Usenet.  An STV poll would have been
interesting too.  (i.e. where you can vote for your first choice, then
second choice, and so on.)
-- 
Mark Brader		"I conducted a Usenet poll ... on this subject ...
Toronto			 Laura is single.  By a 2-1 margin."  -- Ken Perlow
utzoo!sq!msb, msb@sq.com

This article is in the public domain.
From: rhodesia@wixer.cactus.org (Felix S. Gallo)
Subject: Re: How is the Net financed and what does it cost?
Followup-To: alt.folklore.computers,comp.misc
Organization: Real/Time Communications
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 92 18:19:23 GMT

barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:
>
>Besides the telecommunication charges reflected in the above, there's also
>disk space for storage at every site.  If you post a 1K message to a
>newsgroup that exists on 100,000 machines, you're using up 100MB of storage
>spread around the world, so your message is costing the world about a
>couple hundred dollars.

Actually, this isn't quite true.  If one considers the lifetime of a disk
drive and the lifetime of an article, you get

the drive: 4 years [*] = 52 * 4 weeks = 208 weeks of life
the article: 2 weeks [*]

i.e. that 100MB you're using up is 1/104th of the total usefulness of
the uber-drive's lifetime; assuming that you use up 100MB of a uber-drive,
and assuming that the uber-drive was bought retail at today's prices as
an aggregate of 2.1 gig scsi shoeboxes from the Computer Shopper [*],
your article would cost $1.50 a megabyte to store, you'd be storing
it for 1/104th the lifetime of the device, and the quantity of your
megabytage would be 100.

100 * 1/104 * 1.50 = 1.442307693 (approx)

so, assuming that my figures are close to correct, your posting a 1k article
would cost the net approximately eight packets of Top Ramen (6/$1.00) plus
enough change for some cheap gum.

[*] indicates a place where the data is not guaranteed to be valid by any
governing authority.  In particular, I went low on the drive life estimate
and assumed two-week expires on average for the average usenet group; this
is what I did when I adminned news, your experience may differ.  Also,
disk systems range in expense; I imagine that one might have to pay as
much as $3 a meg for certain drives, in which case the cost-per-article
is up to nearly $3.

If someone finds ridiculously stupid errors in my article, feel free to
point them out gently on the net and flame me in e-mail. :)

Felix

>-- 
>Barry Margolin
>System Manager, Thinking Machines Corp.
>
>barmar@think.com          {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar


-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Felix Sebastian Gallo                              rhodesia@wixer.cactus.org
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Xref: sparky news.misc:1852 comp.misc:4257 news.admin.misc:276 alt.folklore.computers:15935 misc.misc:3731
From: bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton)
Newsgroups: news.misc,comp.misc,news.admin.misc,alt.folklore.computers,misc.misc
Subject: Re: How is the Net financed and what does it cost?
Date: 7 Nov 92 21:24:18 GMT
Organization: Intel Corp., Chandler, Arizona
NNTP-Posting-Host: alfalfa.intel.com

In article <1992Nov6.183312.3827@amgen.com> chriss@sam.amgen.com (Chris Silvester) writes:
>In article <1992Nov4.181923.26835@wixer.cactus.org>, rhodesia@wixer.cactus.org (Felix S. Gallo) writes:
>> i.e. that 100MB you're using up is 1/104th of the total usefulness of
>> the uber-drive's lifetime; assuming that you use up 100MB of a uber-drive,
>
>I don't know the specifics of the net, but you're logic seems sound.  One
>point you fail to mention though...if everyone in the world starts posting
>lots of meaningless articles simply because it's cheap to do so, the combined
>cost would quickly become quite significant...

Heh.  You've seen alt.binaries.*, then, have you?

BTW, there's at least one UNIX(TM) variant (i.e. AIX) that
reports memory utilization (see getresources(3)) in units
of KB*s (kilobyte-seconds) rather than kilobytes.

				--Blair
				  "Thinking in terms
				   of nerd-weeks..."
Newsgroups: news.misc
From: ckd@eff.org (Christopher Davis)
Subject: Re: Mock election, anyone?
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation Tech Central
Distribution: usa
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 03:28:52 GMT

JG> == Jamie Gritton <gritton@alaska.et.byu.edu> 
sensei> == sensei@dojo.mi.org (the Maniak) writes:

 sensei> Is anyone on the Internet/Usenet planning on holding some sort
 sensei> of "mock election", where we get to email/telnet somewhere and
 sensei> cast a mock vote for U.S. president?

 JG> Knowing (guessing) the political makeup of the net people, it would
 JG> probably be a tie between the Libertarian and Socialist candidates.

Someone actually did do a poll, it wound up being (in order) Clinton,
Marrou, Perot, Bush, Kibo, and downward from there.
--
Christopher K. Davis      | ``Usenet seems to run much like the Kif (or,
<ckd@eff.org>   EFF #14   |   for the TV generation, Klingon) high command.
System Administrator, EFF |   Whoever takes action and can be heard wins.''
+1 617 864 0665  [CKD1]   |   --Peter da Silva <peter@ferranti.com>
Newsgroups: news.misc,comp.misc,news.admin.misc,alt.folklore.computers,misc.misc
From: brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: How is the Net financed and what does it cost?
Organization: ClariNet Communications Corp.
Date: Sat, 07 Nov 1992 01:31:52 GMT

While we all like the distance independent model, the realities of data
pipes are very similar to the phone system.   The local pipes are used
only on connections to or from local people, and the LD pipes are used
on all non-local connections.

Unlike the phone, it is true that you are on this net just as likely to
connect to somebody remote as somebody local, bandwidth being equal.
That may mean that they have to build lots of LD data pipe, and they can
do flat rate pricing if it makes sense.

Flat rate pricing has many advantages, but it does have a couple of
disadvantages.  Flat rate pricing works when you charge each user what the
average user would actually pay under variable rate pricing.

This means that most people are actually paying more than they would have
paid under measured service, to subsidze the high volume users.

Well, that's roughly how it works, because the other disadvantage -- under
flat rate, people's usage changes, and people tend to use more.  Ie. you
do need to buy more raw bandwidth, or you end up giving people poorer
service than you did under measured service if you charge the old measured
service price.

As it turns out, you usually charge a bit more than the averge you would
have charged under measured service.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Sunnyvale, CA 408/296-0366
From: Opal_Sullen@republik.fidonet.org (Opal Sullen)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: moving the ftp'd file to my drive...
Distribution: world
Date: 7 Nov 92 23:21:32 PST
Organization: Eiffel Media of Orange County

In a message dated Mon  2 Nov 92  4:07, Fsars@acad3.alaska.edu wrote:

 FRS> You're not telling us what your home machine is.  But I assume it's
 FRS> either a MacIntosh or an IBM-PC/clone.

why would you assume that?  it's an amiga, but i do have both a mac and a
peecee too.  ideally i would have one of each.

 FRS> One cannot give you a more specific answer without more specific
 FRS> information, such as the machine you are using, the software or
terminal
 FRS> emulator that you> are using....

well, you could have done like someone else in my local area did and say,
"try using 'sz' for z-modem downloads..."  i tried it and got it to work in
about 2 minutes.

anyway, there was about a million ways to get the job done i guess, i just
wanted the easiets one and got it.

btw-there ARE alternatives to macs and peecees: you shop around when
choosing a car, right?  why not do the same when shopping for a computer? 
my amiga meets needs like no other machine could for the same price.

-- Via DLG Pro v0.995

                        Opal Sullen - Session Manager @
                 0x0 Republik, Orange County, Ca. 714.530.5442
            sullen@republik.fidonet.org - eagg033@orion.oac.uci.edu
      ___________________________________________________________________
        F i d o N e t - U s e N e T - I n t e r N e t - A m i g a N e t
       ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                1:103/108.0 - Republik.FidoNet.Org - 40:402/1.0
From: Bob.Dickey@altern8.mi.org (Bob Dickey)
Sender: FredMail@altern8.mi.org
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: help with bogus newsgrou
Date: 06 Nov 92  12:06:10 EST

SV>Hello,
SV>In the last few weeksI have experienced some problems using rn.
SV>When I try to read some newsgroups I get the following messages:
SV>WARNING! BOGUS NEWGROUP ..name...
SV>This is happening with almost every newsgroup but the very first ones
SV>(general, administration... ). I read all the possible info  I could find,
SV>but noone talks about this warning.
SV>I have discovered  this is happening only from my node, because
SV>I know people that is reading these list with no problems.
SV>Any clue??
It sounds like a problem I had not to long ago. I am a user not a sysop but
the sysop of the BBS I call, had not up dated his list of echos and when I
tried to "tag" an echo that wasn't realy there, it said about the
samething. Maybe the echos you are trying arn't ware the say they are.


 * OLX 2.1 TD * BBSing is terminal.

Xref: sparky news.misc:1861 comp.misc:4263 news.admin.misc:290 alt.folklore.computers:15981 misc.misc:3739
From: bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton)
Newsgroups: news.misc,comp.misc,news.admin.misc,alt.folklore.computers,misc.misc
Subject: Re: How is the Net financed and what does it cost?
Date: 9 Nov 1992 02:16:11 GMT
Organization: Intel Corp., Chandler, Arizona
NNTP-Posting-Host: alfalfa.intel.com

In article <34HwTB1w164w@rbyte.proteus.qc.ca> grb@rbyte.proteus.qc.ca (G. Randolph Bickerton) writes:
>In an earlier response to this overall question someone's signature stated 
>that "there is no such thing as a free lunch!" .  As for the internet there 
>is just a lot of "charity".  WE all share the net because some larger 
>organizations ( academic, corporate, government etc) have the hardware in 
>place; pay for the major transmission costs and let the little guy 
>piggyback.

Cooperation, not charity.

You pay your portion of the hard costs of the net, just
like you pay for the lavatories in your workplace and the
managers who run your life for you.  Even if you don't have
to write the check, it comes out of the grand collection of
the world's resources you are allowed to use before someone
slaps your wrist and says you're hogging wrt your contribution.

				--Blair
				  "I want to be anarchy."
				  -Johnny Lydon
Xref: sparky news.misc:1864 comp.misc:4268 news.admin.misc:297 alt.folklore.computers:16001 misc.misc:3747
From: limes@ouroborous.eng.sun.com (Greg Limes)
Newsgroups: news.misc,comp.misc,news.admin.misc,alt.folklore.computers,misc.misc
Subject: Re: How is the Net financed and what does it cost?
Date: 9 Nov 92 10:39:07
Organization: Sun Microsystems Computer Corporation
NNTP-Posting-Host: ouroborous
In-reply-to: xyzzy@mertwig.UUCP's message of 6 Nov 92 02:14:14 GMT

In article <gmmsTB9w165w@mertwig.UUCP> xyzzy@mertwig.UUCP (Daniel Drucker) writes:
|   Like telephone?
|   I don't want to have to pay more to telnet farther. Thats plain stupid.
|   The whole point of the net is a cyberspace where distance is meaningless.

Fine. Figure out what it would have cost if all of your connections were
to timbucktu and send the difference to your favorite charity. ;-)

We don't really have "distanceless cyberspace" yet. The fact that you
have the illusion that it might exist, tho, should give us all an
indication of how far we have come since "uucp" was written.

-- Greg Limes [limes@eng.sun.com]
Newsgroups: news.lists
From: Christophe.Wolfhugel@grasp.insa-lyon.fr (Christophe Wolfhugel)
Newsgroups: news.lists
Subject: Usenet site size statistics -- October 92
Followup-To: news.admin.misc
Date: 7 Nov 1992 17:00:40 +0100
Organization: INSA Informatique (Grasp), Lyon, France
NNTP-Posting-Host: grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr
Summary: statistical study of usenet sites
Keywords: site, statistics, size, arbitron

Following statistics have been done using Brian Reid's list of
sites participating to the monthly arbitron statistics survey.

Number of sites:  766  (last months: 773 - 1090 - 815)

  Range       #      %       T#     T%
----------------------------------------
0000-0000:    24    3.13      24    3.13
0001-0001:     7    0.91      31    4.05
0002-0003:    35    4.57      66    8.62
0004-0007:    61    7.96     127   16.58
0008-0015:    89   11.62     216   28.20
0016-0031:   101   13.19     317   41.38
0032-0063:   126   16.45     443   57.83
0064-0127:    99   12.92     542   70.76
0128-0255:    78   10.18     620   80.94
0256-0511:    60    7.83     680   88.77
0512-1023:    38    4.96     718   93.73
1024-2047:    20    2.61     738   96.34
2048-4095:    21    2.74     759   99.09
4096- ++ :     7    0.91     766  100.00

#  =   number of sites
%  =   percentage / total
T# =   cumulative number of sites
T% =   cumulative percentage

Mean site size:  289 (last months: 283 246 241)
Standard deviation: 887 (last months 837 734 706)

Logarithmic mean: 3.9
Log. Std. Dev:    1.9
Geometric mean:  47.5  (approximates the hump of the curve)
Sigma (left):     7.0
Sigma (right):  324.1

Median:            48  (there as many sites with less users than with more)

Most encountered number of users:

#Users    Sites
    0       24
    2       24
    8       19
    4       19
    5       17
    7       15
   13       15
   10       14
   18       13
    3       11
   20       11
   19       10
   11       10
   12       10
    6       10

Remember that sites reporting 0 users have probably a broken script for
counting users, or really have 0 non administrative users. You can also note
that this is also the most encountered value :).

-- 
Christophe Wolfhugel    |    Email: Christophe.Wolfhugel@grasp.insa-lyon.fr
   "No keyboard, press F1 to continue"