[11448] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
The whole CIX concept is flawed
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Sun Apr 3 03:21:27 1994
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 1994 19:57:02 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: jlw@cs.columbia.edu
Cc: bilse@eu.net, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: James Waldrop's message of Sat, 02 Apr 1994 19:22:21 -0500 <199404030022.TAA25307@shekel.cs.columbia.edu>
>From: James Waldrop <jlw@cs.columbia.edu> [responding to me]
>>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.
Ok, 400 users @ $20/mo is $8000/month or $96K/year. The CIX fee is
$10K/yr or $833/mo. A $2.50/month/user surcharge for using SLIP would
more than cover the expense. So what's the problem? That those end
users don't have $2.50/month to spend and $22.50/mo for a SLIP
connection is just unbearable vs $20/mo?
Even that assumes that it can't just come out of the $20/mo.
Anyhow, unless you claim that the CIX also doesn't have any expenses
they have a right to re-coup then why is this service's needs more
important than the CIX's needs? A fair price for something isn't
normally set based upon the least-able to pay's needs.
And I think the original claim that this started with, that this
$10K/yr fee is exclusionary and unfairly preferential to the likes of
Sprint is now shot to hell, no? I mean, $2.50/month SLIP surcharge?
>My fundamental problem with this fee is that it creates an artificial
>distinction between selling IP and selling a shell.
Now that's a different point, I was responding to the claim that it
was exclusionary and preferential to big corporations.
>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?
Per host routing across all CIX member networks for one thing. And
whatever coordination etc that entails, salaries etc.
I mean, as I said before, if it's not worth anything to you ("you" in
the broad sense), then by all means don't pay it. However, if it is
worth something then we're just haggling the price at best. Is this
the place to haggle the price? I dunno. But is there anything more
going on here?
>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.
Ah, now you're off on this claim again. $2.50/month/connection
surcharge for 400 users. It really is a bargain @$10K/yr I'd say.
-Barry Shein
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