🚀 go-pugleaf

John,

	Thanks for the posting.  It comes at a very appropriate moment
and answers a lot of outstanding questions.  One point still puzzles me, 
though, and perhaps you can address it here.

	I have been informed that soon it will be a requirement that any
new 56kbps and higher connections to NEARnet pay a 'tariff' to the Commercial 
Internet Exchange (CIX) of around $ 2500/year.  Is this true?  And if so, 
what benefits would this offer the member organization?

	So far, CIX looks like a marvelous way to grab yet another slice
of an already dwindling pie, for little or no returned value.

	(I have heard that all current NEARnet members are (or will be)
'grandfathered' into this arrangement.)

	Thanks for the info.

		-Rob Raisch, CENTnet - the Cambridge Entrepreneurial Network
-- 
"Nobody knows the tourbles I've seen."

In article <2449@cthulhuControl.COM>, raisch@Control.COM (Robert Raisch) writes:
> 	I have been informed that soon it will be a requirement that any
> new 56kbps and higher connections to NEARnet pay a 'tariff' to the Commercial 
> Internet Exchange (CIX) of around $ 2500/year.  Is this true?

I don't know where this rumor could have come from, but its certainly
not a requirement of the CIX.  If NEARnet joins the CIX, then NEARnet
pays a yearly CIX membership fee (currently $10,000/yr) and figures out
how to get their packets to the CIX (I believe that they are planing on
using ANS to reach the CIX).  NEARnet members certainly do not have to
pay anything to the CIX; however NEARnet may pass on to their
membership NEARnet's cost in joining the CIX (the CIX membership fee
plus whatever ANS is going to charge NEARnet to transit NEARnet's
packets to/from the CIX).

	--asp@uunet.uu.net (Andrew Partan)
[I am the AlterNet Engineering Manager.  AlterNet is a founding member
of the CIX.]

> raisch@Control.COM (Robert Raisch) writes:
> 	I have been informed that soon it will be a requirement that any
> new 56kbps and higher connections to NEARnet pay a 'tariff' to the Commercial
> Internet Exchange (CIX) of around $ 2500/year.  Is this true?

asp@rodan.UU.NET (Andrew Partan) writes:

> I don't know where this rumor could have come from, but its certainly
> not a requirement of the CIX.  If NEARnet joins the CIX, then NEARnet
> pays a yearly CIX membership fee (currently $10,000/yr) and figures out
> how to get their packets to the CIX (I believe that they are planing on
> using ANS to reach the CIX).

Perhaps it's an ANS charge?  Gordon Cook recently posted the article below
to the com-priv list.  If ANS will be charging NEARnet $2500/year _per_
_NEARnet_customer_ to relay traffic between NEARnet and the CIX, then NEARnet
will certainly be forced to pass that cost on....

| Message_From: Gordon Cook <cook@tmn.com>
| 
| [...] The August issue of Data Communications has an interesting 
| article on the internet from the european perspective. After saying that 
| OARnet has a gateway agreement with ANS CO+RE, it goes on to say on page 
| 107:
| [...] Mid level service 
| providers pay ANS an additional annual fee for each connection to their 
| network; a 56-kbit/s connection costs $2,000 a year for noncommercial 
| traffic and $2500 a year for a mixture of commercial and non commercial 
| traffic.

This still sounds unlikely to me - that NEARnet will have to pay ANS a fee
for each of its customers, when there's no guarantee that any one customer
will send even a single packet via NEARnet to ANS.

-- 
Tom Fitzgerald   Wang Labs       fitz@wang.com   "I went to the universe today;
1-508-967-5278   Lowell MA, USA                   It was closed...."

It's been a week since I asked the question about the CIX fee and
so far no answer from Nearnet.  What gives?

Thanks to all who answered in mail.  Most were very informative and 
useful.
	</rr>
-- 
"Nobody knows the tourbles I've seen." ...And I'm not even wearing any trousers.

In article <2479@cthulhuControl.COM> raisch@Control.COM (Robert Raisch) writes:
>
>It's been a week since I asked the question about the CIX fee and
>so far no answer from Nearnet.  What gives?
>
>Thanks to all who answered in mail.  Most were very informative and 
>useful.

Hello All,
 
  Sorry I missed the question, Rob (although I am glad that some of our
members helped you out).  We've got a one-directional gateway for nearnet.tech
and nearnet.general, and hadn't been expecting any postings to these groups.
Needless to say, from now on I will be watching these groups to catch any 
stray messages.  Gatewaying postings back into the mailing lists will be
looked at if things get too busy.
 
  We've since talked on the phone regarding commercial usage, but if there's 
any remaining questions let me know ASAP.  I do expect to be posting some 
details in the next two weeks, but am more than willing to answer specific 
questions that anyone might have in the meantime.

/John