From: David Drury <idavid@smug.adelaide.edu.au> To : Mark Newton <newton@atdot.dotat.org> Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 13:07:32 +1030 (CST)
Hi,
> I'm actually really surprised that there haven't been many contributions
> to this thread by people from ISPs who aren't my employer -- I know
> they're on this list, and I find their silence mystifying, since most of
> the contents of this thread have been fairly general to all ISPs, not just
> the particular one that I work for. Please consider that when you're
> wondering why we've been talking about one particular provider for much
> of the past week.
Ok, I'll bite, even though I don't think this comment is directed in my
direction, I do help run what can essentially be considered an ISP.
SMUG (Student Machine User Group) is a student run club in Adelaide
uni. We provide ISP like services to students at a cheap rate. Part of the
reason we can do this is that the costs of infrastructure are mostly
covered by the Universities network, we simply piggyback ontop of the
network.
We are charged per MB for traffic, and this does present us with some
problems. We have a general access solaris box and some modem lines. We
want people to use useful services, but we also want to recover the costs
of the usage of that service in incomming traffic. We also have to
consider that some stuff will be almost impossible to charge for like
incomming mail.
We have eventaully opted for a charging model of a cross etween the two
main ones mentioned. Trafic analysis has shown we roughly do 50% web
browsing/ftp, 25% email, 25% rest. We use squid logging to charge per MB
for web download that works on a credit system. Our modem costs are
avereged to a 6 mothly cost = number of lines rental cost divided between
the average number of users. The rest of the costs are averaged over all
users (including admin and upgrade/maintainance costs).
So far the system works, but only because we have a relativly small number
of users, an existing infrastructure to support us, and the administration
is done on a volunteer basis.
Many of the points made by Simon about recovering costs do apply more or
less, in the same way. SMUG would be un-economical without the uni to
support it.
Anyone else care to comment now ?
cya
--
David Drury
_______________________________________
\ iddrury@teaching.cs.adelaide.edu.au \
\ idavid@smug.adelaide.edu.au \ __________ |
\ Adelaide University Union \ / \___-=O`/|O`/___|
\ IT Co-ordinator. \_______\ / | / )
/ Student Machine User Group / `/-==__ _/__|/__=--|
/ Systems Administrator. / * \ | |
/ "Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum." / (o)
/______________________________________/
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