Re: The Remailer Crisis

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>What are the cheapest "live connections" (24-hour a day connections)
>available? Where I am, about $100 a month, plus whatever the local
>phone company charges for a dedicated line. ISDN is an option, but it
>looks to cost $400-800 to get started, plus a monthly charge (which I
>don't recall, except that I "gulped" when I heard it).

I am currently using ISDN from my home in San Jose.  You're right in 
that the startup costs are the barrier--even a cheap single B channel 
(56K) terminal adapter for use with a serial port will run $300-$400
dollars.  The telco charges are minimal in my area; $25 monthly for
the line itself (115 Kbps async bandwidth).  Connect charges are free 
for non peak usage, and $0.60/hour for peak usage time (0800 to 1700) 
Mon-Fri.

This is the Pacific Bell "Residential" ISDN plan.  For business lines,
it goes up to $50 monthly with $0.60/hour 24 hours a day.

In addition to this would apply any standard long distance charges that
would apply to a particular call.

This is an excellent setup for fast, cheap, INTERMITTENT connection to 
the Internet.  My particular ISP is in Santa Cruz, with POPS in SC, SJ,
and soon Monterey.  An unlimited connect time PPP account runs $75 monthly.
This actually gets me a three bit subnet so that I can put five IP boxes 
and an ISDN router on my ethernet at home.

A remailer in this scenario would need to have their MX record point to
their ISP, and process mail via POP (incoming) and SMTP (outgoing).  
It would be straightforward to implement a timed or demand dial scenario 
(say, every fifteen minutes) to accomplish this.  While not the ideal 
(continuous internet connection with pure SMTP based mail transport), it
would suffice for a moderately loaded remailer, I'd imagine.

Of course, this involves the mail subsystem of your ISP, partially
defeating the purpose of having ubiquitous anonymous remailer "instances"
whose operation is outside the control of an ISP.  Still, it would be
a good start.

==
Johnathan Corgan       "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
jcorgan@scruznet.com                    -Isaac Asimov


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> 
> I am currently using ISDN from my home in San Jose.  You're right in 
> that the startup costs are the barrier--even a cheap single B channel 
> (56K) terminal adapter for use with a serial port will run $300-$400
> dollars.  The telco charges are minimal in my area; $25 monthly for
> the line itself (115 Kbps async bandwidth).  Connect charges are free 
> for non peak usage, and $0.60/hour for peak usage time (0800 to 1700) 
> Mon-Fri.
>
I am also using ISDN to get my network on through Southwestern Bell.
The charges I had to deal with were:

$135 deposit (refunded in 2 years)
$73 per month line rate (2B+D)
$350 per month for ISDN connection to another system on Internet and in
     Austin there is only one system that can do this for .com sites.
     This is a commen problem all over the country I understand.
$1150 for Combinet 160 w/ NT-1 for ISDN-Ethernet bridge.
$750 for account setup and for the folks at the other end to configure.

This is a little expensive for home use but well within the means of even
small businesses. 
 
> This is the Pacific Bell "Residential" ISDN plan.  For business lines,
> it goes up to $50 monthly with $0.60/hour 24 hours a day.
>

I am lucky in that I am flat rate.
  
> In addition to this would apply any standard long distance charges that
> would apply to a particular call.
> 
 
We get charged only for the D channel traffic which is usually used for call
progress control. In general we don't use the D channel at all.
 
> This is an excellent setup for fast, cheap, INTERMITTENT connection to 
> the Internet.  My particular ISP is in Santa Cruz, with POPS in SC, SJ,
> and soon Monterey.  An unlimited connect time PPP account runs $75 monthly.
> This actually gets me a three bit subnet so that I can put five IP boxes 
> and an ISDN router on my ethernet at home.
> 

It is a clean, fast (300kbs w/ compression), and economical for a full time
feed as well.

Johnathan Corgan wrote:

> I am currently using ISDN from my home in San Jose.  You're right in 
> that the startup costs are the barrier--even a cheap single B channel 
> (56K) terminal adapter for use with a serial port will run $300-$400
> dollars.  The telco charges are minimal in my area; $25 monthly for
> the line itself (115 Kbps async bandwidth).  Connect charges are free 
> for non peak usage, and $0.60/hour for peak usage time (0800 to 1700) 
> Mon-Fri.

Well, let's do the math. Since the remailer has to be connected at all
times, of course, this implies $162 a month in connect charges, over
and above the other charges. Or $187 a month including the line
charge. Or $2244 a year. 

This makes a "cheap Linux box" almost a moot point. This is a lot more
than I'm willing to pay to run a remailer.

(I can imagine workarounds that involve connecting at regular
intervals to pick up mail....assuming it "accumulates" somewhere (?),
but the goal of a remailer "on the Net" is what I'm after.)

> A remailer in this scenario would need to have their MX record point to
> their ISP, and process mail via POP (incoming) and SMTP (outgoing).  
> It would be straightforward to implement a timed or demand dial scenario 
> (say, every fifteen minutes) to accomplish this.  While not the ideal 
> (continuous internet connection with pure SMTP based mail transport), it
> would suffice for a moderately loaded remailer, I'd imagine.
> 
> Of course, this involves the mail subsystem of your ISP, partially
> defeating the purpose of having ubiquitous anonymous remailer "instances"
> whose operation is outside the control of an ISP.  Still, it would be
> a good start.

I agree that it's something to look at.

--Tim May



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On Thu, 19 Jan 1995, Timothy C. May wrote:
 
> Well, let's do the math. Since the remailer has to be connected at all
> times, of course, this implies $162 a month in connect charges, over
> and above the other charges. Or $187 a month including the line
> charge. Or $2244 a year. 
> 
> This makes a "cheap Linux box" almost a moot point. This is a lot more
> than I'm willing to pay to run a remailer.

Best.com offers a dedicated 28.8kB line connection to the internet 
with $450 setup charge and $60 a month connect charge.  This
is a permanent connection, not a dial up connection.

This works out to $720 per year, plus setup charge.

This is as cheap as it gets for a box on the internet.

Now this is OK if one wishes to run linux, and have a
remailer as one hobby in addition to the main use of the
box, but it is still a bit much to pay for a dedicated 
remailer.

Now I just do not like linux.  Sure it is a great
operating system but it will not run codewright

(Vi causes mental degeneration.  Even though I detest,
loath, and hate vi, vi takes up so much brainspace that
I find myself issueing vi commands in editors that I 
use much more, and vastly prefer to vi.  Vi is evil.)

Therefore there is no way in the world I am going to
waste a full internet connection and a PC on linux.



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