Date: Sat, 21 Oct 1995 16:52:40 -0500 (CDT) From: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com> To: dennis@etinc.com (dennis) Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: ISDN: Sync vs Async. Was: Bragging rights.. Message-ID: <199510212152.QAA00577@brasil.moneng.mei.com> In-Reply-To: <199510211600.MAA04981@etinc.com> from "dennis" at Oct 21, 95 12:00:10 pm
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> First of all, you need to be a better marketeer, Joe. I'm not a marketeer at all :-) But I have been around a hell of a long time (I remember when Milwaukee's only Internet link was 9600 bits per second) :-) I do have some idea as to what works and as to what doesn't. > First you make it a > trade-up option, > not the default. Sure you can tech-talk the layman > into almost anything, but you have FACTS to work with here. Well, that's fine. > Second of all, > you are simply lucky > that the average joe doesn't know that you're cheating them by giving them 30% > less bandwidth then they think. Cheating them? Buddy, in this business, people PAY for bandwidth. An ISP could really care less about the technology used to connect a customer's site - it only affects recurring monthly costs and startup costs, which are passed off to the customer anyways. What you're REALLY paying the ISP for is bandwidth! And if you drop in a technology that squeezes more data over the line, the ISP needs to take this into account in their overall strategy. A T1 can be split into over 30 64K async channels before reaching bandwidth overcommit, whereas it can only be split into 24 sync channels! That is a respectable impact on operations. If you get some wonder gizmo that does compression, only a stupid ISP would allow you to use it without charging you extra. Same principle. It might have something to do with why the monthly (bandwidth) fee for a 64K async ISDN connection is typically LESS than a 56K (sync) connection. Why is it that I keep getting the impression that you don't understand this? > You'd be surprise how many customers you'll get > when you tell them that your competitors are ripping them off. Ride the wave for > now, and hope that your competitors don't figure it out first..... And pray your customers are stupid enough to fall for such a simplistic scam. That's just plain old dirty marketing. Competitors are not "ripping them off". See below. > Personally, I would gladly pay an extra $50. a month for a 30% increase in > bandwidth. > Of course, I wouldn't buy ISDN for any amount...... $50/month more? HAHA! You're more naive than I thought. I hate to be the one to explain this, but ISP's are not out to be generous to their customers. The switch from sync to async is gonna run you more than that. Let's throw some Real World Numbers around. It costs an ISP maybe $2500 a month to drop a T1 to someplace respectable. Split 24 ways, that's about $104 a month. Split 31 ways, that's about $80 a month. Right there, it costs the ISP $24 a month more to provide that sync bandwidth just in the T1 cost per 64K sync channel (i.e. wholesale bandwidth cost) - for two channels, you're perilously close to the figure you named. Now, figure that it costs the ISP significantly more to provide a sync serial port to the customer. They're probably NOT going to be using an ET card in a FreeBSD box, but even if they do - I can purchase 32 async ports for a single FreeBSD box for about $600, and with all the trimmings I can build a respectable terminal server with 32 ports for less than $1500. That's about $47 per port, which I would typically split by 6 and add to a customer's monthly bill (so say $8/month). Now, for an ET based solution, let's assume I can stick 5 dual port sync cards in a box. Again, the cost to build the box itself is maybe $900, and each card is maybe $500, so my cost to build is around $3400, or $340 per port because I only get 10 ports. That's $57/month I would charge a customer for that port, in the best case where I filled a box! So now, costs to provide: 64K async ISDN = $80 + $8 = $88 64K sync ISDN = $104 + $57 = $161 128K async ISDN = $160 + $8 = $168 128K sync ISDN = $208 + $57 = $265 Just considering bandwidth and hardware costs - so this is essentially _wholesale_ pricing. Now we need to consider the cost of an ISDN line, ISP operation expenses (rent, salaries, related services, etc), and profit. Of course, you can use bandwidth overcommit to help reduce some portions of your expenses, but when it comes down to the bottom line, if you can get sync serial for just $50 per month more than async, your ISP is obviously either overcharging for async connections to begin with, or is gonna go out of business if they get too many sync customers. There's just no way. ... Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Greco - Systems Administrator jgreco@ns.sol.net Solaria Public Access UNIX - Milwaukee, WI 414/342-4847
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