Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site oliveb.UUCP 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