[2062] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: NREN and the Economics of Mainframes Versus Workstations
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard Mandelbaum)
Thu Jan 23 09:28:14 1992
To: cook@tmn.com (Gordon Cook)
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 23 Jan 92 01:58:52 -0500.
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 92 08:33:18 -0500
From: Richard Mandelbaum <rma@tsar.cc.rochester.edu>
Why doesn't your computational scientist use his sun workstation in
the chemistry department to do E-mail with as well. This whole story
sounds very strange. No one charges $250/month for E-mail unless you
are doing a hell of a lot of E-mail and storing it on site and perhaps
"forgot" about the other 500 megs of storage you have on the machine etc. etc.
____________________
<<MESSAGE from>> Gordon Cook 23-JAN-92 1:58
cook@tmn
I had a very interesting conversation this evening witha com[putation
al
scientist who uses compuserve to send and receive internet email. Th
e
reason why is fascinating. His university computer center charges hi
s
grant $250 a month for his VAX account and the only thing he used the
VAX
for was sending email. Compuserve costs far less..... even though I
have
heard that they now charge 15 cents per every 2 kilobytes for interne
t
email. Is this true? If they have an email surcharge will attmail a
nd
mcimail be far behind?
I asked him how he telnets to his friendly NSF supercomputer center.
from
the sun workstation in the chemistry department was the answer.
Researchers are apparently abandoning the university mainframes en ma
ss.
It would be interesting to know if any economist has looked at the co
st to
american education of keeping its mainframe infrastructure alive. Th
e
NREN legislation lets researchers use their grants for network expens
es
for the first time. has anyone ever tried to quantify how much of th
is
money will go in the form of surcharges to university mainframes rath
er
than to buyingnew networking services for university scientists. the
economics behind NREN on many levels appear to be murky. it would be
interesting to know how the economics of use of university computing
centers are changing and to what extent access to the net *IS* still
a
free good for university faculty.
I would appreciate hearing publicly or privately reactions to these
questions.
