[602] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: At What Price Will TCP/IP Connections Gain Wide Market Appeal?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (alison@osc.edu)
Tue Apr 16 12:41:18 1991
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 10:43:19 -0400
From: alison@osc.edu
To: brian@napa.telebit.COM, francis%zaphod@gargoyle.uchicago.edu
Cc: Will@cup.portal.com, com-priv@psi.com
OARnet is working on offering dialup service using the Netblazer,
because it's our feeling that the type of customer that wants this
service (for us, that's community colleges, high schools, and small
to medium-sized businesses) are absolutely unprepared to get SLIP
running and keep it running. We would end up doing that for them,
which is uneconomic. Our take is that $3700 capital investment is
do-able for these folks and that the final cost, as Brian Lloyd
mentions, is much less than ongoing support that SLIP demands.
There are still a few operational problems with the Netblazer in our
environment, but Telebit has been working with us on those. I
just thought I would mention this, since as Brian works for
Telebit he is of course not an uninterested party, where as we have
no particular axe to grind other than wanting a service we can offer
at a competitive price and that means not spending lots of engineering
time supporting it once it's operational.
