Commercial Newsfeeds

[Rick Adams]

Currently the uunet computer is a 14 CPU Sequent Balance 21000.  (The
Symmetry upgrade still hasn't arrived. It's currently scheduled to ship
on 9/16.) It has about 1 gigabyte of disk space. Here's a "df".  Note
the filesystems that are mounted. It's a tad unusual...

	Filesystem            kbytes    used   avail capacity  Mounted on
	/dev/zd0a               7721    6143     805    88%    /
	/dev/zd2d               7721     503    6445     7%    /tmp
	/dev/zd0g             112197   98371    2606    97%    /usr
	/dev/zd1g             500878  202540  248250    45%    /usr/spool
	/dev/zd2f             216705  146926   48108    75%    /usr/spool/ftp
	/dev/zd0h             104491   79315   14726    84%    /usr/spool/news

There is a 6250 bpi tape drive for backups and 24 megabytes of memory.
There are currently 32 serial ports and an X.25 board.

The X.25 board supports a 56 kbps Tymnet connection. The serial ports
are currently divided into 10 800 number ports, 12 "local" direct
dialup lines and 3 outbound WATS lines. There is a T-1 connection to
SPRINT for the 800 service and the WATS lines.  (All modems are Telebit
Trailblazer Pluses)

uunet is connected to the Internet via a local ethernet and then through
the Center for Seismic Studies' arpanet IMP. It is connected to mcvax
via a 9600 bps serial line running SLIP (surprise...). The mcvax line
will be upgraded to 64 kbps as soon as they get it hooked up.  (I.e. we
ordered it and are now waiting for it). It is the nameserver and
domain forwarder for about 100 domains.

There are currently 421 uunet subscribers. Each day we average about
200 connect hours and transfer about 190 megabytes (this does NOT count
Internet traffic).  I think sendmail processes about 9-10,000 messages
per day, but I haven't checked lately. We are feeding news to about 202
sites.

Income is running about $50,000 per month. Expenses are running about
$49,000 per month ($20,000 for Tymnet; $15,000 for Sprint; $5,000 for
the computer). The average customer bill is about $125. The lowest is
$35. The highest is often over $1,000. The size of the bill depends on
how much data you transfer and how and when you do it. (E.g.  using
Tymnet during the day is 9-10 times more expensive that using Tymnet at
night.) UUNET is run on a non-profit basis by the USENIX Association.

I expect the connect hours and megabytes transferred to greatly
increase Octoberish, when X11R3 is releasedish. Historically, traffic
increases about 40% for the 3 weeks after an X11 release. (With a
Trailblazer modem, you can uucp the X release for less money than MIT
charges for the distribution tape; and you get it a whole lot faster
[the same day its released if you are lucky]) If I could get MIT to put
out X releases more frequently, we be doing really well!

Information on subscribing to UUNET, etc can be obtained by sending
your postal address to uunet-request at uunet.uu.net or calling (703)
764-9789.

---rick