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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!oliveb!jerry
From: jerry@oliveb.UUCP (Jerry Aguirre)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Who Pays?
Message-ID: <628@oliveb.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 4-Nov-85 16:03:40 EST
Article-I.D.: oliveb.628
Posted: Mon Nov  4 16:03:40 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 5-Nov-85 09:47:24 EST
References: <244@stl.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: Olivetti ATC; Cupertino, Ca
Lines: 41

> I don't understand all the stuff about backbone-sites-pay-for-it-all-so-they-
> and-they-only-may-decide-what's-good-for-the-net.    Surely a feed site
> doesn't call 'leaf' sites? They call it?   So feeding doesn't cost telephone
> charges directly.  Most of what you feed on, you'd get anyway for your own
> users.  

Just feeding news to several other sites does not make a site a
"backbone".  A backbone site is (in general) one which sends and
receives news from a geographically remote site.  The costs incurred by
backbone sites are generally caused by long distance transmission costs
(usually phone calls).

There are only a few sites that carry news across the USA.  Without
these sites news posted in one area of the USA would have little chance
of ever reaching the bulk of the news systems.  To put it in European
terms which you are probably more familiar with, it is not the cost of
ukc sending news to stl, it is the cost of mcvax sending news to ukc.
And even more importantly it is the cost of mcvax getting news from
seismo.  You derive benefit from the seismo to mcvax link even though
you are not directly connected to either.

I am told that the seismo to mcvax costs are distributed out to the
other European sites.  In the USA there is no mechanism for
distributing the backbone costs to the rest of the network.  It is a
non-trivial matter to even figure out how such charges would be
calculated.  The USA backbone link does not have the simple star
structure that Europe has.  Any place that the news flows in both
directions the decision of who pays would be debatable.

Take a look at the map of backbone sites (posted in mod.map).  Try
figuring out how much of the cbosgd to clyde link that I (oliveb)
should pay for.  Obviously I get some articles by that path but I
suspect that if it went away I wouldn't notice.

So you see it is not as simple as "feed" sites and "leaf" sites.  The
cost of a "feed" site sending news to a local "leaf" site is generally
too small to worry about.  The bulk of the cost is in a few cross
country links.

					Jerry Aguirre @ Olivetti ATC
{hplabs|fortune|idi|ihnp4|tolerant|allegra|tymix|olhqma}!oliveb!jerry