🚀 go-pugleaf

emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti @ Msen, Inc. -- Ann Arbor, Michigan) once wrote....
>
>From the commercial side of things, Steve, I'd say that the lack of a mail
>park would be a Bad Thing if I was thinking about starting up a business 
>in the area.  Free services are great for getting people up to speed, making
>sure there's lots of skilled labor in the area, keeping your for-pay service
>honest, and generally upping the expectations that people have about how their
>mail should work.  Now just off the top of my head I can think of
>	Michigan	.mi.org, .mi.us
>	Minnesota	.mn.org
>	Oregon		(RAIN)
>	Texas		.lonestar.org
>	Chicago, IL	.chi.il.us
>in the US that have functioning parks going, plus
>	Germany		.sub.org, .open.de, IN	
>	Italy		.sublink.org
>and no doubt plenty of others around.  *Not* everywhere tho.
>

You are very right that they are not everywhere.  Done here in .au we have a
backbone internet called Australia Academic Research Network (AARNet) and they
basically have the monopoloy on connections to the Internet.  Most Australian
universities are connected to it, but they are very reciticent to allow non
academics to connect.  Which is fair enough as they are paying for it.

AARNet have the monopoloy on connections to the rest of the world
as no one else has been able to afford to set up an alternative link to the US
(or the Internet) and thus not need to pay for usage on AARNet as they would 
be using their own wires to get their traffic around.  This has been policed 
by AARNet by requiring a payment of $1000 for a MX record, if that MX record
means that you are going to use AARNet as transport for your traffic.

Now $1000 is very hefty if you are a single user uucp site and want to connect!
There isn't any uucp network in Australia to speak of and there aren't any
domain parks to speak of either.  Which makes it extremly difficult for a 
non academic interested party to get access.

There is one option which I have found and adopted, that is the
Australian Public Access Network Association (APANA) which uses the MX
*.apana.org.au.  This is a non profit organisation which is trying to
support Public access in Australia.  APANA has set up a uucp network across
the country linking major cities via the one MX, with member sites paying for
the long distance calls from their back pocket.  But AARNET aren't really happy
with this, using one MX to service groups of machines which may be
in other states, and want to hit APANA with $1000/state for usage.

So if you do have access to a domain park and a free one at that, count 
yourself lucky as some of us don't have any of those benifits of a 
large multi sponsored network.

By the way if anyone out there does have any spare bandwidth on a cross 
pacific link, let me know as I know some people (APANA) who could 
really use a bit. :-)

Mark

----
Mark Purcell, 62/25 Market Street, SYDNEY NSW 2000.  (02) 283 5598
	Mark.Purcell@pos.apana.org.au, msp@kralizec.zeta.org.au