[9262] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Cost vs benefit of internet services
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Mon Dec 27 13:05:56 1993
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 1993 13:05:14 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: bcox@gmu.edu
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: bcox@gmu.edu (Brad Cox's message of Mon, 27 Dec 1993 11:09:59 -0500 <9312271609.AA07697@mason1.gmu.edu>
>From: bcox@gmu.edu (Brad Cox @ GMU/PSOL)
>Thanks for yet another wonderful article, Barry. But it raises a factual
>question that I'm sure is on many of us internet consumers' minds.
>
>What precisely *is* the difference in cost in providing a bottom of the
>barrel unix shell account versus a SLIP or PPP capable account?
Well, there are some differences, first let's make sure we're
comparing apples and apples:
For $250/mo the Alternet SLIP service gets you your own dedicated
modem and phone number etc which you are free to use and will be
available at all times (I'm sure other providers are similar but I
hesitate to try to speak authoritatively on their services, I don't
even claim to speak authoritatively on Alternet but I know something
about their pricing structure.)
Unix dial-in accounts are modem-pool with no such dedicated hardware
per se.
Analogous modem pool SLIP services are not all that different in price
from modem pool interactive services, for example Alternet's AlterDial
services are $20/mo + $3/hr (if you are a local dial from one of their
POPs blah blah, this is not meant to be a price offering etc.)
Now, another consideration: Pushing 14.4kbps (typical modem speed
these days) up and down through an entire protocol stack simply takes
more hardware horsepower than simple dial-in. For example, I can
easily support 130-150 people logged into our Solbourne server as Unix
accounts. I haven't tried it, but I'd be surprised if I could support
half that if it were used as a SLIP server. Granted that's not the
most efficient SLIP server (or maybe it is, I don't know), but the
point is that's well over a quarter million in machinery, doubling the
resource price of each "seat" is going to affect the price of the
service.
Further, there's technical support. When someone can't manage to login
to a simple, interactive session there's probably only one of a very
few things wrong: One of a very few modem settings (did it work
yesterday? what did you change?), wrong phone number, is it plugged
in? Not only can most problems be solved in a few words of advice by
someone who isn't enormously technically sophisticated, but in fact
you never hear about most problems, people (customers) just solve them
for themselves by just asking themselves the same questions (hmm, what
did I change here...oh! right!) So you never even hear it. The method
is also quite robust in the face of software "upgrades" etc, people go
from DOS 5.0 to DOS 6.0, fire up their terminal emulator and in
general either it just works (usual experience) or their machine halts
and they go and call whoever they bought the package from for an
upgrade or advice, it's easy for them to describe (I went from DOS 5
to DOS 6 and my MumbleComm package I bought from you stopped working.)
SLIP etc has no such robustness, problems can be quite obscure and,
worse, you don't tend to get nice, informative, partial failures, "I
get the login prompt, but it won't accept anything I type", "hmm, is
your parity right?", vs "I dunno, it dials, the other side answers,
and then nothing...", but it might be the same problem.
Worse, much worse, upgrades and "leetle" changes have a tendency to
just break everything with SLIP. Even worse, virtually *none* of the
packages (particularly the ones people use from personal computers)
have any support whatsoever, they're freeware or similar. Now, a lot
of terminal emulators are freeware (I can see someone reaching to
point this out) but they're just not that complicated, and if someone
seems way over their head getting a freeware terminal package to work
then a fancy-shmancy professional terminal package is all of $69.95,
take your credit card down to Computer City and get rid of that
headache. Few people protest that advice (and they all have a friend
who can get it for them for $49.95 anyhow...)
This isn't at all true in the SLIP world, the few professional
versions I know of costs hundreds of dollars. Your low-ball customers
(and that's who we're talking about) aren't going to be very happy
with the suggestion to go buy some big, expensive package (which also
probably has limited support compared to something as simple as a
terminal emulator, that is, the money may not help all that much.)
And customers aren't going to sit still very long with not being able
to establish a connection, even if it's entirely their fault, you took
their money and now they're getting nothing is all they know. Well,
you can help them, but you have to be able to recoup those costs. It's
less a network/data service as people might imagine and more of a
systems adminstration service. Any of dozens of things may be making
their end ill, and many of those things interact in peculiar ways.
Anyhow, in summary:
1. Hardware and Software Resources - sheer load, need to dedicate
router resources to every connection and make sure they're each
announced to the entire net properly, various schemes for POP, usenet
news, etc vs just running UAs.
2. People resources - Technical sophistication of customer support
needed (someone who can coach someone thru a terminal emulator problem
is not as expensive as a person who can coach someone thru a SLIP
problem, most completely unsophisticated customers manage to solve
their own problems anyhow), lack of professional support and "slick",
inexpensive SLIP packages representing some convergence of setup
possibilities (something approaching the simplicity of "is it set to 8
bits, no parity? what's your baud rate? is it plugged in?). Initial
setup of an interactive acct can be done by someone with zero
computing knowledge (we do that all day), even straightforward initial
setup of a SLIP connection requires the time of at least a junior
systems administrator who understands SLIP, addressing, name servers,
routing, etc.
I'm sure there's more to this story, but perhaps that gives some
hints.
-Barry Shein
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