[11446] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: The whole CIX concept is flawed
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (James Waldrop)
Sun Apr 3 01:52:51 1994
To: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Cc: bilse@eu.net, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 02 Apr 1994 18:36:52 EST."
<199404022336.AA28537@world.std.com>
Date: Sat, 02 Apr 1994 19:22:21 -0500
From: James Waldrop <jlw@cs.columbia.edu>
Barry Shein wrote:
>
>From: James Waldrop <jlw@cs.columbia.edu>
>One wonders what they plan to *EARN* from selling this access?
>Nothing? If so then perhaps their business plan needs another going
>over. $10K will barely keep two people paid a modest salary and
>benefits and sitting in an office somewhere with minimal amenities
>such as furniture, phones, fax, copy machine etc. for one month.
>$10K/year is $833/month. That's less than my electric bill and we're
>hardly a Sprint or whatever, we have about 12 employees in rather
>typical office space. Are these people being realistic? Are they
>getting good advice?
Imagine, if you will, a small BBS. They don't really *care* about
becoming a big BBS. They have other jobs, this thing is run out of
their living room, it's fun, maybe it'll be useful come retirement,
but it's not like they're planning on making millions. They charge
their users $20/month for a shell account, and they specifically
have a small audience, say 400 users. They shelled out $20K to get
this thing started 4 years ago, and they've gone from having a
14.4K dialup connection to a 56K dedicated line. Great. Suddenly
Mosaic is a big thing, as is Gopher and all these other wonderful
connection-oriented GUI packages. They'd like to give everyone
SLIP instead of shell. They have a Livingston Portmaster, so they
don't *have* to buy anything new. It's all there. But they get
told they should pay CIX $10K because they're reselling IP connections.
These people don't exist. I made them up. But I can imagine something
like this happening in lots of places, with various shades of difference.
My fundamental problem with this fee is that it creates an artificial
distinction between selling IP and selling a shell. You can't conceivably
get any more bandwidth out of your link, a 56K can only go so fast. You
don't get any additional ability to go any places you couldn't go before.
What is this $10K buying me again?
I don't hate CIX. I think CIX is great. What I would like to see is
some kind of fee structure that recognizes we aren't all Sprint or PSI.
James Waldrop
jlw@cs.columbia.edu
sulam@well.sf.ca.us
