[2183] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: low-end users
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lars Poulsen)
Wed Jan 29 12:52:49 1992
From: lars@spectrum.CMC.COM (Lars Poulsen)
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 92 17:50:37 GMT
Apparently-To: com-priv@psi.com
Barry Shein said:
> I could easily throw a stat-mux with a leased line (or similar) into a
> local public school or library and put 32 lines into my system for,
> well, not a whole lot of money. Probably $5K startup and around
> $500-$1000/month for relatively unlimited use, per site, plus some
> infrastructure costs (e.g. a T1 to the internet for this purpose, a
> couple of staff members.) That could support 500 people easily, so
> under $5/month/person I'll guess wildly (I suppose in the startup you
> need the cost of PC's or equivalent if they don't have them, many K12
> schools certainly do have them already.)
Barry was criticized for aiming too low with this "1976 technology"
proposal, which was seen as standing in the way of upgrading the service
later. But it doesn't have to....
The "statmux" device, might actually be a terminal server with dial-up
synchronous PPP on the network side, and an (optional) ethernet
interface. Such equipment can indeed be "plug-and-play".
A bigger issue is support costs ... if you shift the application
environment (i.e. the CPU on which you run mail and news and whatever)
from the classroom to a service bureau (to use 1960's terminology), we
have centralized the costs, and we now share a few specialists rather
than having to teach a bunch of schoolteachers unix system management.
But whichever way you slice it, the costs are still there, and the
function needs to be done.
-----
The rest of this message is not network technical, and is really outside
the scope of this discussion. But as a parent, I feel that it needs to
be said at least once.
In article <CMM.0.90.2.696647784.vaf@Valinor.Stanford.EDU>
vaf@Valinor.Stanford.EDU (Vince Fuller) writes:
>Hmm. From what I recall of our talks with public schools and libraries, they
>do NOT consider $500-$1000/month cheap (even if it does translate into only
>$5/month/person). I suspect they'd rather hear numbers more like $1000/YEAR
>for a link to the Internet (which is close to our current low-end offering)
All in all, the real question is, what are our national priorities for
education ? Are we allocating enough money for our schoools, and what
should the schools be doing with the money that does get allocated ?
As a computer networking professional, I agree that it would be nifty to
have all the junior and senior high school kids hacking netnews rather
than hanging out at the mall. But if we are preparing to spend an extra
$5/month/child, then as a parent and taxpayer, my first choice would be
to use it to reduce class sizes from 35 to 32. Compared to the goal of
getting class sizes down to a level where teachers can give students
some individual attention (i.e. 22-25 students to a class), the "PC on
every desk" is an unreasonable frill, which is likely to funnel even
more money away from teaching basics (such as classrooms and teachers)
and into hiring staff specialists.
--
/ Lars Poulsen, SMTS Software Engineer
CMC Rockwell lars@CMC.COM
