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From: ems@amdahl.UUCP (ems)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: The cost of a message
Message-ID: <2501@amdahl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-Jan-86 13:23:28 EST
Article-I.D.: amdahl.2501
Posted: Tue Jan  7 13:23:28 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 8-Jan-86 20:23:10 EST
Organization: Circle C Shellfish Ranch, Shores-of-the-Pacific, Ca
Lines: 22
Keywords: Dollars, cost, message, phones

With all this talk of blowing away various news groups and
the great cost of phone calls for the backbone sites, a
question has come to mind.

How much does it cost to send an average/typical message
over the whole net?

As a 'user' of the net, I think some about the cost; but
I have no magnetude to hang onto.  Just a vague feeling
that this must cost some.  It would be very helpful to
me, at least, to know how much I was spending for a typical
30 line posting.  If I knew that the total cost for all
sites for disk space and phone calls was, say, $24, for
some hopeless blather; I would tend not to spend it...
(If it was $1.98 though ... :-)

Does this information exist?  If so, could it be advertised in
the other groups?   Thanks!
-- 
E. Michael Smith  ...!{hplabs,ihnp4,amd,nsc}!amdahl!ems

This is the obligatory disclaimer of everything.

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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!bellcore!vortex!lauren
From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: The cost of a message
Message-ID: <871@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 8-Jan-86 15:07:38 EST
Article-I.D.: vortex.871
Posted: Wed Jan  8 15:07:38 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Jan-86 06:26:46 EST
References: <2501@amdahl.UUCP>
Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles
Lines: 6

Some preliminary stats I worked out once (which are only a very
rough approximation, for obvious reasons) indicated that the cost
of a one screen message, distributed as "netnews" to all sites,
probably cost at LEAST 100's of dollars.

--Lauren--

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decwrl!glacier!reid
From: re...@glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: The cost of a message
Message-ID: <2963@glacier.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 9-Jan-86 01:33:20 EST
Article-I.D.: glacier.2963
Posted: Thu Jan  9 01:33:20 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 10-Jan-86 23:34:11 EST
References: <2501@amdahl.UUCP> <871@vortex.UUCP>
Reply-To: reid@glacier.UUCP (Brian Reid)
Organization: Stanford University, Computer Systems Lab
Lines: 51


Here are two independent computations of the cost of a a news message. They
yield $27 per message and $32 per message, respectively (for a
1000-character message). The first computation is a forward computation
based on the price of telephone calls and the connectivity of the network;
the second computation is a backward computation based on Glacier's monthly
phone bills and the amount of monthly traffic that we see.

Forward computation: assume that...

N=4000		Number of nodes on USENET
C=1.5		Average redundant connectivity of a USENET node
K=0.10		$US per minute for long-distance telephone time
L=0.02		$US per minute for local telephone time
S=80		Characters per second average throughput
P=1000		characters in a news message

Optimistic computation (all telephone calls local, no redundant
connectivity). In this case there will be about N phone calls for N hosts;
the cost of sending a message to those N hosts is N*L*P/(60*S), which is
4000*0.02*1000/(60*80) = $16.66 per 1000-character message.

Pessimistic computation (all telephone calls long-distance; 50% redundant
connectivity). This is N*C*K*P/(60*S), which is 4000*0.10*1000*1.5/(60*80),
or $125 per 1000-character message.

I think that a reasonable model--perhaps right to within a factor of 3--is
that 10% of the phone calls are long distance, that there is very little
local redundancy but about a factor of 1.5 long-distance redundancy (most of
the backbone hosts have more than one long-distance feed path). This gives
us the hybrid formula
   COST = 0.9*(4000*0.02*1000/(60*80)) + 0.1*4000*0.10*1000*1.5/(60*80)
or COST = 14.94 + 12.50 = $27 for a 1000-character message.


Backward computation:

Glacier's phone bills for USENET are about $500/month and the monthly
traffic is about 20 megabytes. That means that we are paying $500/20000 per
1000 characters, which is about 2 cents a message. If every node on the net
pays a comparable amount, then the cost of that message is 4000*0.02 or
$80/message. Maybe only 10% of the sites on the net have phone bills as
large as $500/month--say the average monthly phone bill for a USENET site
is only $200. That would result in a figure of $32 per 1000/character
message.

P.S: this message is 2500 characters as it leaves my terminal. That means it
is costing about $100. I'd better shut up.
-- 
	Brian Reid	decwrl!glacier!reid
	Stanford	re...@SU-Glacier.ARPA

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bellcore!vortex!lauren
From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: The cost of a message
Message-ID: <872@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 12-Jan-86 19:38:30 EST
Article-I.D.: vortex.872
Posted: Sun Jan 12 19:38:30 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 15-Jan-86 00:58:23 EST
References: <1063@ecsvax.UUCP>
Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles
Lines: 6

Golly.  That's an interesting thought.  What does it cost in terms
of people time/salary time for the various non-technical groups
that people read and post to?  I'm not saying that they shouldn't--
just that the figures might be rather "alarming" in aggregrate.

--Lauren--

			  SCO's Case Against IBM

November 12, 2003 - Jed Boal from Eyewitness News KSL 5 TV provides an
overview on SCO's case against IBM. Darl McBride, SCO's president and CEO,
talks about the lawsuit's impact and attacks. Jason Holt, student and 
Linux user, talks about the benefits of code availability and the merits 
of the SCO vs IBM lawsuit. See SCO vs IBM.

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