[320] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: What's happening in commercializatoin
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Gilmore)
Thu Mar 7 18:50:54 1991
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 91 13:55:21 PST
From: gnu@toad.com (John Gilmore)
To: com-priv@psi.com
ddern@world.std.com (Daniel P Dern) wrote:
> Well, the recent bickfest has been interesting ... but I'm curious --
> just what _is_ happening in the commercialization arena? Any new
> networks? Any organizing among the local public access Unix hosts?
> Any new carrier services? Any new push from commercial users?
On the local front, several of Cygnus' customers are working on getting
on the Internet with us. So far none of them favor Barrnet, partly
because of the "social welfare" pricing policy that penalizes
commercial companies, and partly because they can't do business over
it. Alternet seems to be the favorite, perhaps because we are only a
local hop away on it, avoiding a loop through the East Coast (if indeed
PSI and Alternet have bothered to connect *anywhere* yet).
So far none of our customers who are on the Barrnet or other regionals
have switched to commercial carriers; they just continue to break the rules.
Hoptoad (toad.com) is now on the Internet, as a spur of the local
Little Garden network, a mess of Usenet-like leased lines which hangs
off the Alternet. (Usenet-like in the sense that you find a neighbor
and hook up, sharing costs.) A number of other local sites are
interested in joining, though the capital cost of router boxes
(2x$3000), leased line installation (2x$1000), and modems ("DSUs",
2x$700) deters most. We're working on reducing the router box cost
with mods to KA9Q software for 56K leased lines, bringing it to about
2x$1000. Line installation cost would be significantly reduced under
local ISDN tariffs, but nobody has interfaces for it anyway, it only
works in a single central office, and wider area networking of it is
hung behind Caller ID for technical/financial reasons at Pac Tel.
(Caller ID needs ISDN infrastructure to move around the calling phone
number, but the PUC won't let them deploy it due to privacy concerns,
so they have stopped installing the infrastructure.)
It will be curious to see how the Netblazer works for spreading commercial
TCP/IP over dialup lines on demand. It still costs 2x$3000 for router,
2x$700 for modems (at uunet discount), but eliminates the leased line fee
and might reduce or increase monthly phone bill, depending on usage.
