🚀 go-pugleaf

The following comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily
refelect those of my employer ...

In article <928254992DN5.61R@tanda.isis.org>, marc@tanda.isis.org (Marc Thibault) writes:
|> In article <58-PCNews-124beta@pos.apana.org.au> 
|> (Mark Purcell) writes: 
|> 
|> > 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
|> 
|>        It sounds like you folks need to stimulate the "for profit"
|>        network business that is turning NA into an on-line society.

Those at the coal face of the AARNet operation recognise the economies
of scale and likely savings to the existing owners and operators of a
national IP network that would result from an open access, commercial
position. 

However, if the owners of network (in our case the Australian Universities,
represented by their Vice Chancellors) decide that the network will be
restricted to use by universities and the CSIRO (a national research
organisation a bit like the US national labs) and other organisations
with "compatible interests" then that's their decision.

|>        Many thousands of us pay about $100/year (the cost of two good
|>        technical reference books) for internet/uucp access via
|>        commercial hosts set up for that purpose. Most of these are in
|>        someone's basement or den.
|> 
|>        In Ottawa (pop. 400,000) there are at least two 'pure' uucp
|>        services and a number of BBS' that include internet mail and
|>        usenet news along with the dozen or so BBS networks. The small
|>        fee ensures that each of these services has hundreds of users;
|>        more than enough to pay for the equipment and lines.

Mark made an error in his orirginal posting. The $1000 MX fee is *not*
for an MX record - it is for electronic mail access to AARNet's infrastructure.
The MX record is part of parcel of all this.

Mark also did not mention that *exactly* the same service, ie. mail access
to AARNet, is available to individual members of the Australian UNIX
Users Group (AUUG), for $250 per year.

Please note these charges are an access fee only - a third party organisation
(of which there are many) needs to provide the store and forward gateway.

I would like to also point out that the cost of reaching the Internet 
from Australia is just a little more than it might be in most parts
of the US. We currently operate a 512K link to the US and it costs
some $500,000 per year for a *half* circuit.

|> > 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.
|> 
|>         AARNET needs a few competitors who're not so greedy. I'd lobby
|>         your indigenous BBS community to take a shot at it.

AARNet is many things - greedy it is not. We have two (2) full time
staff, a severely constrained budget and very little room for movement
in regards to policy. Our IP access charges are based on what it costs
to run links to the full AARNet members (the Australian universities),
and the mail-only charges are a result of a protracted (and ugly)
discussion that was had over the network in late 1989/90, where the
organisations that acted as store/forward gateways collectively said
they did not wish to do volume charges (the $1000/$250 is not volume
dependant).

A full list of all organisations connected to AARNet (which is a damn
sight more than just universities) can be found in 

	aarnet.edu.au:pub/doc/aarnet-members.txt

Details of the Affiliate membership program are in

	aarnet.edu.au:pub/doc/affiliate.txt	(or .rtf or .ps)
	aarnet.edu.aupub/doc/auug-affiliate-form

There are also several sites that offer dial-up UNIX and similar services.

APANA have negotiated a deal that I believe meets their needs. Any other
entity representing a common-interest user community know how to reach us.

-- 
Peter Elford,                             e-mail: P.Elford@aarnet.edu.au
Network Co-ordinator                      phone: +61 6 249 3542
Australian Academic Research Network      fax:   +61 6 249 1369
c/o, Computer Services Centre             pager: +61 6 245 3035
Australian National University            post: GPO Box 1142     
Canberra, AUSTRALIA                             Canberra ACT 2601