Re: Specific Questions

[Michael Dillon <michael@memra.com>]

On Thu, 26 Dec 1996, Karl Denninger wrote:

> > Great idea Karl. Buy every IAHC member a Pentium system with sound
> > capabilities and ISDN connections with Win95 and Netmeeting installed and
> > configured. This should cost $8,000 per member when you add up the cost
> > for equipment, software, paying someone to do the initial configuration
> > and paying someone to install the system at each member's location.
> > Doesn't include shipping charges or any customs fees. Of course this also
> > means that ISDN Internet connections have to be available at each
> > location. And each IAHC member has to learn how to use Win95 and
> > Netmeeting.
> 
> I can easily equip an office of 20 people with LAPTOPS up to this job for
> under $3,000 per person.  That's $60K.

And what is your hourly rate and how long will it take you to complete the
job including installing the ISDN connections in Israel, Japan,
Switzerland and Australia not to mention 5 US cities? If you were willing
to donate this equipment and services then you should have spoken up
months ago.  

> But $400,000 worth of expensive?  You only get THAT by paying people's
> conference call bills and airline tickets.  

You are now mixing Apples and Oranges. Prior to this we were discussing
the operation of the IAHC itself which is mainly meetings and discussions.
You are now moving into the selection procedure for qualified registries
which is wuite different. At that stage it will require an office with a
staff of at least one person. It will require paying an internationally
reputable accounting firm to check out applicants in whatever country they
may originate and to certify that the lottery is properly conducted. It
will require a competent international law firm to draw up contracts that
will be acceptable in all countries which registry applicants come from. 

The whole CORE process and database will need to be set up which requires
six servers to be set up with the database software and a team of
programmers to be hired to implement the registry application and verify
it's correctness and the ability to properly failover. These servers then
have to be deployed in pairs to three different colo sites that are both
geographically and topologically distributed.

Frankly I'd be surprised if they manage to pull it off for less than a
million. There is little room to cut corners on a project like this.
We have to hire people who are known to be competent and implement
technology that is known to be stable and reliable. 

> There are less expensive ways to do this.

Sure there are. But the users of the Internet don't want to use a network
that's held together with string and sealing wax. That's why the thousands
of miles of barbed wire in North America aren't being used to carry IP
traffic even though they are cheap.

Michael Dillon                   -               Internet & ISP Consulting
Memra Software Inc.              -                  Fax: +1-604-546-3049
http://www.memra.com             -               E-mail: michael@memra.com