[11603] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Need Help Articulating Internet Benefits
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Sun Apr 10 20:10:40 1994
Date: Sun, 10 Apr 1994 17:22:44 -0400
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: "Monte Hall"'s message of Sat, 9 Apr 1994 00:33:57 -0500 (EST) <2092.jhall3@mason1.gmu.edu>
This is something I wrote a while ago on this topic. It still needs
some cleaning up (corrections welcome, flames not so welcome) and
expansion but I think it does cover some of the core of this question
reasonably well. Others have found it useful. I did a quick pass just
now to fix some glaring errors but that's all.
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die | bzs@world.std.com | uunet!world!bzs
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
Why Your Company Should Hook Up To The Internet
by
Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die
bzs@world.std.com
Disclaimer: This is an early draft (8/5/92).
INTRODUCTION
This will be a very focused piece on the why's of hooking up to the
Internet, not the how's nor an attempt to explain exactly what the
internet is. I assume the reader knows what the internet is at some
technical level and is now looking for business reasons to convince
their management to pay for a hook-up. Also, I am focusing on direct
internet connections, not dial-up store-and-forward connections such
as UUCP.
It is important to understand that there are really two or more
mainline Internets. There is the research portion and the non-research
portion. Although they normally speak to each other this is not
necessary. The reason this is important is because you cannot conduct
for-profit business on the research portion, but you can conduct such
business on the non-research networks. For-profit would include
commercial by-pass, such as hooking up two of your sites' e-mail via
the internet (unless, of course, you could convince NSF that this is
research or educationally related.)
I will tend to focus on the non-research internet and non-research
aspects. In particular, what you should understand is something called
the "CIX", the Commercial Internet Exchange, which is a consortium of
internet network vendors who agree to mutually allow commercial "ok"
connections and activities. By and large for commercial hookups this
is the main game in the USA and some other countries although if you
are not in the US you should check with local networking organizations
(e.g. EUNET in Europe.)
GENERAL
Assuming you need a wide area network, even for the most basic
purposes, the first question you want to ask yourself is: Do you want
to USE a network, or do you want to RUN (and design) a network?
If you're like most people, you don't want to run or design a network,
you just want to use one.
The internet is a ready-made network that spans much of the world with
very good, high-speed links throughout the USA, Canada, Europe, The
Pacific Rim and elsewhere. Much of the rest of the world, including
many less developed countries, are reachable at least via electronic
mail through this same internet.
If your business has offices or colleagues you need to communicate
with frequently and you're paying on the order of US$1,000 per month
or so in long-distances calls, faxes, and document and data delivery
(FedEx, UPS etc) to keep in touch then you want to seriously consider
an internet hookup.
There are two basic ways to hook up to the internet, either by direct
internet connection or dial-up via terminal emulation. The first is
what might be called a full internet connection, the latter is much
less expensive and generally limited to text oriented applications.
One major advantage of a dial-up account via terminal emulation is
that it's very inexpensive (around $20/month/account) so is a way to
begin exploring the internet and making it part of your corporate
culture before trying to justify the expense of a full internet
connection. Much of the power of the internet is accessible via simple
dial-up accounts, and besides being inexpensive it requires almost
zero technical knowledge, just any common communications package such
as Zterm for the Mac or Telix for the PC (both of these are available
as shareware), or any number of inexpensive packages. For Unix you can
similarly use tip or cu which are probably on your system already or
get a copy of Kermit (kermit supports error-free file transfer as well
so is preferable to tip or cu.) Kermit is free.
For a direct internet hook up, assuming you already have a TCP/IP
capable LAN or are willing to develop one (note that this is just an
add on feature for Novell and AppleTalk LANs, and many Unix
workstations already have this software included) you basically just
get a box which will plug between your LAN and a line ordered from the
phone company, and you're on. This will of course entail some charges,
including start-up and access fees. Here is a typical budget for a
56kb line:
One-Time:
Router $6,000 This is the box that goes into your Lan
DSU/CSU $ 750 This is a box that takes the leased line
and converts the signal for the router.
Line Install $ 750 Varies from regional telco to telco
Start-Up $2,000
------
$9,500
Some of these fees can often be pro-rated by the network vendor into
your monthly charges.
Monthly:
Line $ 500 This goes to the phone company
Network $1,000 This goes to the network company
------
$1,500
Note that these are just estimates based on my (very real) experiences
hooking people up to a particular network vendor.
The conclusion should be that even for modest sized companies this
will not be a major expense, although it is not trivial either.
The advantage of hooking up like this is that you can replicate this
in other offices in other cities throughout the world (international
charges will vary quite a bit, but the above is roughly accurate for
anywhere in the USA) and instantly be able to communicate at
high-speeds to your other offices and colleagues as well as the
millions of other people on the net. You do not have to pay for
long-distance leased lines between offices, these are all subsidized
into the monthly network charges. You just hook each office into the
closest access point. They don't even have to use the same network
vendor in each case as they all speak with each other compatibly (at
least in the case of CIX members.)
Better, you don't have to design that network. Hooking up two offices
is, admittedly, a cinch for someone with even modest
telecommunications savvy. Hooking up five or more offices can be a
nightmare unless you really know what you are doing.
Hooking those same five offices via the internet is a cinch and
requires almost no intricate knowledge of the problem, you just order
the hook-ups much as you would order phone lines.
Even where there is a need for internal network set-up the network
vendors can generally provide people who will come in and help for a
fee, usually quite reasonable. The important point is that you are
working with people who are very knowledgeable about the problem and
motivated to help you get hooked up, you're not on your own, you won't
need to "re-invent the wheel".
When you consider that managing your own network would probably take
at least one full time person at approximately $100K/year fully loaded
it's not hard to begin rationalizing the costs if you have considered
a wide-area network as an answer to your communications needs.
These hookups are volume-insensitive in most cases. This means that
you can transmit as little or as much data as the lines will carry
without incurring metered charges. Your costs are fixed and
predictable. Compare that with your current long-distance, overnight
delivery and fax costs!
I should point out that there are metered services such as something
called "Dial-Up SLIP" which are metered, at least by the phone company
as you use your regular telephone lines and modems to hook-up. These
are low-cost-of-entry hookups for very low-volume users but generally
not recommended for modest to high volume use, although they can be a
good way (and often economical) for small offices to get started on
the network, or to hook up that small branch office without incurring
all the startup charges that might be more reasonable for your larger
branches. You can certainly mix and match different levels of service
at different locations.
Electronic Mail
You can send electronic mail to hundreds of thousands of sites on the
internet, millions of people. Between connected sites mail usually
moves anywhere in the world in well under a minute. I often see
deliveries between my office in Boston and sites in Australia in as
little as 4 seconds.
Mail is not limited to text messages, although those can be very
useful. You can also mail files, binary files and programs, graphical
images, fax images, sound, etc. with the right software and
procedures. In many cases this software is freeware and may even be on
your system already. For example, on Unix systems binary files can be
packed up with uuencode and, if necessary, split up with the native
"split" command, and shipped very reliably and in seconds anywhere in
the world through electronic mail.
Standards and software are currently appearing which allow the
transparent inclusion of files of many types into electronic mail
messages.
Because electronic mail is inherently store and forward it is
remarkably robust in the face of network or computer problems.
This means that your mailer (or that of the next hop along the way)
will keep trying to deliver mail (typically every thirty minutes after
a failure) until it gets through, or else it will inform you after
some time that delivery was impossible (often warning you that it is
continuing to try long before it gives up.)
Because probably well over 99% of the electronic mail that is properly
addressed gets delivered within a few tries this means that employees
do not have to tie up their time with the network equivalents of "busy
signals." It's fire and forget in almost all cases and if there's any
temporary problem along the way the electronic mail software takes
care of it automatically. Remember all those times you or your
employees had to stand by a fax machine while a remote fax was busy,
or had to repeatedly call another office just to read a few pieces of
information over the phone or relay a memo? Well, with electronic mail
that problems is almost entirely gone.
And because direct internet hookups are volume insensitive in their
pricing you can send enormous quantities of information between
computers without fretting about the costs. For example, on a 56Kb
line you can send the equivalent of a 300 page novel between offices,
about 500KB, in approximately two minutes, with no added charges to
your bills. This is not true of many commercial electronic mail
vendors such as ATTmail which charge per message and by volume, not to
mention that you usually pay all the per-call line charges with those
services.
There are hundreds (perhaps thousands) of public mailing lists on
specific topics distributed through electronic mail. There's almost
never any charge and to join you just send your electronic mail
address to the appropriate e-mail address and they add you (or remove
you when you want.) Some very popular lists are INFO-NETS (general
discussion on networks), Sun-Managers (a highly technical group for
Sun Microsystems Computer administrators' problem solving), Telecom
Digest (techno-political discussion of the telecommunications
industry), and everything ranging from humor to kids to engineering to
politics.
FILE TRANSFER
Files can be transferred between sites on the internet with a few
keystrokes using a program called FTP (File Transfer Protocol.) A
typical session (under Unix) looks like:
% ftp other.site.name
Login: yourname
Password: yourpassword
ftp> get file.name1
(transfers file from remote site)
ftp> put file.name2
(transfers file to remote site)
ftp> quit
Simple as that, and fast also. The example given in the section on
electronic mail would apply here also, you can transfer the equivalent
of a 300 page novel in about two minutes. And the network
automatically ensures that the transfers are error free.
FTP can handle either binary or text files transparently, and in just
about any volume. Once you are informed that the file has been
transferred it is immediately available on the remote system (or your
system.)
Entire directories or even hierarchies of directories can also be
easily transferred with just a few more FTP commands. There exist user
interfaces for the Macintosh and IBM/PC's that make these transfers as
easy as point and click.
For software there are thousands of free "anonymous" FTP sites around
the world. These allow anyone to login and browse and take copies from
their free software collections.
TELNET
Via the internet you can login to other systems you have accounts on,
for example between branch offices, without incurring any metered
charges.
The line is transparently shared between users, so several people can
be logged in or performing file transfers at the same time, at worst
interactions might slow down if many people use the same line
simultaneously. A 56kb line can usually handle 10 or so interactive
users with little or no noticeable slow-down, and twice that many for
typical useage where there's some think-time between interactions.
Even 30 or more simultaneous sessions can be tolerable for many
applications on a 56Kb line and, of course, higher-speed lines are
merely a matter of money. A T1 line (1.544Mb/s) is approximately 24
times as fast as a 56Kb line for about twice the monthly cost and can
handle about 100 interactive sessions satisfactorily, simultaneous
with file transfer, electronic mail, etc. Very demanding, interactive
graphics applications, of course, put more load on the line per
session.
USENET
Usenet is a coordinated collection of over 5,000 discussion topics
organized into "newsgroups". These are broken down into a hierarchy
such as comp.sys.ibm.pc to discuss issues pertinent to IBM/PC's and
rec.food.cooking for discussions about cooking and foods. Anyone can
post questions and the technical groups can be a godsend for answering
difficult questions that you might otherwise have to employ highly
specialized consultants to answer. Oftentimes someone on one of these
groups has the answer to your question on the tip of his or her tongue
and you've got your solution within a few hours, if not a few minutes.
Also on these groups new products get discussed, vendors and their
employees clarify aspects of their own products and announce new
products, people provide testimonials recommending (or not) products
they've had experience with often relating their experiences in great
detail, etc.
Even if you don't want to manage all this information there are
several sites on the internet which, for a modest fee (typically on
the order of $20/month per account) will let you access their Usenet
system via Telnet.
ClariNet
ClariNet is organized like Usenet, a hierarchy of topics, and is
accessed with the same software. But these groups are read-only and
distribute vast quantities of the AP and Reuters newswire (another
company, MSEN, also offers the Reuters newswire.) These are broken
down into a hierarchy, like Usenet (they use the same software for
delivery) such as clari.news.bulletin, clari.sports.olympics,
clari.nb.ibm (nb is a collection of news columns covering high-tech
business), clari.news.books, clari.biz.market.report, etc. The AP
wires and other services get broken down into over 200 different
topics by ClariNet.
ClariNet is an additional charge service that can be delivered over
your internet line. Prices are typically quite modest for an entire
wire feed and parts of the wire can be purchased separately. Contact
clarinet@clarinet.com for details. Clarinet can also be accessed via
telnet at public access sites for a small monthly charge.
OTHER APPLICATIONS
Many applications exist already which will work over the internet.
Because the internet uses highly standardized and pervasive TCP/IP
protocols many LAN applications "just work" across this wide-area
network.
For example, many of the major database vendors already support remote
database access across the internet, almost nothing other than setting
up permissions needs to be done to enable this. With the internet you
can manage a company database in New York while your other offices in
San Francisco, London and Singapore access the same data base
transparently. There is no need to replicate the database across
sites, and this means there is no need to replicate database
administration and updates.
Network File Sharing such as NFS and Novell (using their TCP/IP
software) can work across the higher-speed internet links (56Kb or
above.) With some inexpensive software and hardware add-ons your PC's
and Macintoshes can also transparently access your files around the
world
INFORMATION AND OTHER SERVICES
Information services are always spawning on the network. Most can be
reached via telnet and charge for their services. You can currently
access Dialog, the information behemoth with over a terabyte (that's
one trillion characters) of databases online including trademarks
(both textual and graphical), patents, and many others. Data Research
associates (dra.com) maintains an internet hookup which lets you
browse the Library of Congress catalog.
There are also many free services. For example, with the appropriate
software you can access WAIS (Wide Area Information Server) which
connects together distributed databases from all over the world, most
of these incur no charge. WAIS supports full text search and
retrieval. There are approximate 200 databases under WAIS ranging from
archives of technical discussion groups on Usenet to law databases and
other topics. The WAIS software is free and available (guess where!)
on the net.
Many vendors offer no-charge anonymous FTP areas providing product
specs and information as well as electronic mail addresses to address
technical and other queries to their staff. You can purchase books
over the internet (or even publish them as many of the major
publishers maintain internet accounts.) Companies such as Pageworks
will take your electronic "camera-ready" copy (typically prepared on
Macs) via the net and produce offset and litho plates or even manage
the entire print production. Other companies will provide demos and
working versions (upon payment) of their products via the net.
Government agencies are rapidly being deployed on the net. You can
currently pick up NSF grant guidelines and announcements via the
internet, there are military news services and many other resources.
[This is the most important section perhaps and needs a lot more work -B]
COST JUSTIFICATIONS
First, it's not very expensive for a company, even a small company, to
get a direct hook-up to the net. For about the cost of an inexpensive
workstation, one-time, plus $1,500/month you can have a very high
quality network hookup into your company LAN which can be shared by
your entire staff.
Because the world-wide internet is managed by the network vendors your
staff costs are usually nominal, you don't have to develop
telecommunications expertise in-house to connect your company's LANs
throughout the world to the internet. It's not much more difficult
than ordering phone service.
Ready access to free software from thousands of archive sites can
often solve your needs without having to purchase commercial packages.
And when you need a commercial package you can often get testimonials
from current customers, talk with vendors, and even receive the
software all over the network.
Your staff's technical abilities can be highly leveraged by access to
technical discussion groups where that nagging problem that was about
to cost you several thousand dollars for a solution suddenly is solved
for no cost by some kindred soul on one of these groups. It happens
all the time. Or gathering suggestions for product solutions to your
needs rather than relying on salespeople who may not always have your
best interests at heart.
News wire and other information services can keep you in touch and let
you search out the information you need electronically.
Information can be shipped between your branch offices, often
replacing expensive fax and document delivery, electronically and in
most cases in a few seconds, anywhere around the world.
Remote computer systems at your other sites can be centrally managed
via the network. Databases can be shared and maintained at just one
site. Software can be distributed, installed and administered remotely
by centralized personnel often negating the need for technical systems
expertise at each physical location.
And, perhaps most importantly, the network and its services are
growing at a fantastic pace. It takes time for such services to become
part of your corporate culture and work style. Like learning a foreign
language, the only good way to become familiar with the net is to
immerse yourself and your employees in it. Waiting until every service
is fully matured is probably a false economy. You can reap benefits
now and, more importantly, you can reap benefits later as they appear
only if you have a staff knowledgeable in how to use this technology.
Remember, a decade back, when some of your business colleagues bought
these new fangled PC's and people laughed and wondered aloud what use
they could be? Remember how a few years later those same
forward-looking colleagues often benefitted in amazing ways from those
computers, often just because they spread them throughout their
corporate cultures early? And how others rushed out to buy them late
only to then spend the next year or two trying to figure them out and
train their staff while their competitors were already coasting? Are
you about to miss an opportunity like that?
POST SCRIPT
The author is President of Software Tool & Die and has been involved
in world-wide computer networking and the internet for over a decade.
Software Tool & Die is the point of presence for Alternet in New
England. Alternet is a commercial internet vendor and was a founding
member of the CIX. Software Tool & Die also runs The World
(world.std.com), a public access Unix site attached to the internet
providing electronic mail, news and information services to the
general public.
--------------------
Copyright, 1992, Barry Shein, Software Tool & Die. Duplication rights
granted to all so long as copies are unmodified and not sold (other
than duplication or information access costs.)
