Chapter 15:
You pay little for a lot!

Calculating costs

Some years ago, a person living in Norway could read up to twenty-six pages of news from Associated Press (the US) and Financial Times (England) for about US$0.38. At the time, this was very cheap.
The trick was to dial long distance to a 9600 bps node in Sweden when the telephone company and CompuServe's non-prime time rates were in effect. 9600 bps gave transfers at up to 960 characters of text per second. One page of text (size A4) held around 2200 characters. A typical news story had one to two pages of text.
Reading exactly the same news through another network or service would cost 300 percent more. Through yet another online service, the cost would double again.
A full issue of the Newsbytes newsletter was at around 150,000 characters, or 68 pages of text. Retrieving it from a local BBS used to cost me around 29 cents. Retrieving it from CompuServe set me back 500 percent more. On old NewsNet, at 2400 bps through Datapak, the cost increased by another US$30.00.
The time of day was important. Some services had different rates for access during the day, the evening, and the weekend. Also, it would take much longer when network traffic was high, resulting in an increased cost per page received.
Today, these costs are indeed much lower for many!
The online news scene has changed considerably. Many users can read almost all the news they want for free via the Internet. The retrieval speeds are much higher. The number of sources for news is staggering.
However, in some countries, reading news is still expensive. Users pay big money for accessing the Internet, using the phone for communications, and buying modems.
In many places, getting connected to the Internet at high speed is limited, or outright impossible. Low capacity links connects the local Internet providers to the global Internet. The result is further decreases in actual news retrieval speeds.
If you don't pay for retrieval of online information, then this chapter may not be for you. Otherwise, stay tuned.

When you pay by the minute

When using free bulletin boards, phone charges are often your only cost item. Calculating costs is easy. Often, you will be able to receive large amounts of data at a very low cost. You will probably get far more than you have time to digest.
Some Internet providers and bulletin boards require a monthly or annual subscription fee for unlimited access. To calculate costs, divide the fee by an estimated number of calls, and add the cost of using your phone to the total.
The same applies to users of CompuServe when the Alternative Pricing plan is in effect. The total cost for a given period is based on an estimated number of calls. Calculate the sum of all connect charges, network charges (to CompuServe and others), (part of?) the basic subscription fee, plus local phone rates (for direct dialing to the service, or to reach the network's node).
Where a service uses a monthly subscription rate, add part of this to the time charges. Distribute the rate using an estimated number of online hours per month.

Example: World Wide Web

Let's assume that your modem speed is 28,000 bits/s without compression, and that your Internet provider offers connection at that speed. Divide by 10 to arrive at the theoretical data transfer speed in characters per second (2,880 cps).
If data flows uninterruptedly, you should be able to transfer 4,712 pages of text or 10 megabytes of information in one hour. However, this is just a theoretical figure for most users and applications.
In my office, the problems start at the time of connecting to the net. Only rarely do I get a good connect at 28,800 bits/s. As an average, I just get 24,000 bits/s.
The connect phase, when the two modems try to open a working relationship, typically takes 30 unproductive seconds.
If my Web browser was opened before dialling, then the next step is to open my list of favorites, and click on the entry of my favorite news provider.
Most news providers "enrich" their article texts with graphics, frames, Java, and other tricks. If cost is an issue, avoid those that are in love with fancy stuff! Also, make sure your Web browser is set not to display graphics. This may have a dramatic impact on time and cost.
One recently visited news provider used 1,897 characters worth of html files to display 600 characters of clean text. The page was enriched with 20 graphics file totalling 93,260 bytes. The net effect was that I had to receive 95 Kilobytes before being able to read anything!!
At 28.800 cps modem speed, I could theoretically retrieve the Web page in 33 seconds. However, since the information was split up into many files, it took much longer. It was further slowed down by high traffic on the Internet at the time. Getting the information took over three minutes!
600 characters in three minutes equals about 10 characters per second. Very slow!
NewsLinx may be more typical. In October 1996, retrieving the article menu with Microsoft Internet Explorer took 1.5 minutes. The call was done through a Norwegian Internet provider. The size of the file (html) was 31 Kb. The page was enriched by 11 graphics files (GIF format) totalling another 31 Kb. The realized speed was 344 cps.
I read on average three articles from this service five times per week. A typical item is 3,500 characters long. The time to retrieve one article varies from 20 to 91 seconds depending on the amount of graphics, and load on the network. In average it takes 45 seconds. Returning to the article menu typically takes another 15 - 30 seconds.
Time spent for retrieval of my NewsLinx news can be calculated as follows: Time to get a good connection (30 seconds), plus getting the menu (1.5 minutes), plus retrieval of three articles (67.5 seconds), plus returning to the article menu three times (60 seconds). The total per day is an estimated 4.1 minutes.
Let's assume that you're not reading articles online. You're reading them off your Web browser's local disk cache after having disconnected (or, by email after having mailing them back to yourself).
Finally, we'll have to add time spent digesting the contents of the menu to make a choice of what articles to read. Use your stop watch to arrive at your estimate.
If you on average spend 10 minutes per day on your news, and do it every weekday throughout the year, then you'll have spent over 43 hours at the end of the year.
If you pay US$10/hour to access the Internet, then the cost amounts to US$430. Add the cost of connecting to the service by phone to get the total cost.

Items to consider

Retrieving information stored on your Internet access provider's hard disks will usually go much faster than getting it from any other disks on the network.
The load and capacity on the pipes going from your access provider to other hosts on the Internet will probably vary considerably, even within your own country, depending on the time of day and day of the week. Therefore, when speed is a concern, some users maintain user names with several ISPs.
Personally, I have accounts on three Norwegian ISPs, plus on CompuServe in the United States. I connect to the latter by making a long distance call to Oslo in Norway.
Whenever the links from my local ISPs to Web servers in North America are clogged, going through CompuServe typically gives much faster retrieval. In one recent case, the local providers gave me the data at around 10 cps. Going through CompuServe, I realized over 1000 bps! This more than made up for the extra cost of calling long distance.

Pauses, delays and bottlenecks

Beware of pauses and delays in your transfers. They can be caused by you or others, and may have a dramatic impact. It is particularly important to take this into account when comparing alternatives using different networks.
Let me explain using an old, but relevant example: Years ago, transfers to TWICS via Datapak at 9600 bps rarely gave me higher effective speeds than 100 cps. The reason was that the connection between the Japanese telcom network and TWICS went through a 1200 bps gateway. So, regardless of my network speed, it was impossible to achieve more than 120 cps.
This is why a high speed connection to your data transporter's network does not guarantee a high speed connection to the remote computer.
I used to go through Datapak at 9600 bps to a computer center in Oslo. There, I was connected through a local area network to the host computer. The effective speed was rarely higher than 4800 bps. Calling direct gave twice the speed.
Today, I connect to a local Internet provider at up to 56,6 Kbps, but still data from some remote Web servers crawl towards me at speeds as low as 10 cps. Using an ISDN line would not give me the data noticeably faster. Bottlenecks en route from the source determine the effective speed.
Try measure the effective transfer speed before selecting a routing for your data. Transfer the same amount of text through various networks.
If future transfers are likely to take place at a given time of day, test at that time. If your planned application is retrieval of programs, retrieve programs. If you want to read news, read news from the services that you want to compare.
When a network service charging for volume (like Datapak) is part of a comparison, measuring volume is particularly important. Do not assume to know the answer in advance.

Always calculate the cost based on a fixed volume, like for transfer of 1000 characters. This is particularly important when you must use different modem speeds to access competing services!

Network load varies considerably throughout the day depending on the number of simultaneous users, and their applications. This also applies to online services. The load is normally lowest, when most users are asleep, and during weekends. When the load is low, you get more done per minute.

Planning and self-discipline pays off

The actual cost of using a given set of services depends much on your self-discipline, the tools you use, and on how well prepared you are:

• If accessing manually, use "quick" commands rather than menus to move at maximum speed to desired sources of information.
• On the Web, let your browser's bookmark feature take you directly to the desired page rather than navigating down the tree from a home page.
• Do not set your services to be used with colors, sound, or special methods for displaying graphics, unless you have no choice, or are willing to pay the extra cost. They increase the volume of transferred text, and lower effective speed.
• Experienced Web users disable receipt of images to reduce the volume of data. Later, all it takes is to click at "Reload Images" to get images you absolutely want to see.
• If your primary interest in the Web is text, then test out Lynx, if available on your ISP's host (see Appendix 6). No windows based graphical browser can match its speed.
• Get the information you want and disconnect. It is often unnecessary to read while online. Log off to read. If cost is high, call back for more to read, disconnect, and then call back again.
• Most popular Web browsers store received pages and images temporarily in a cache on your hard disk. For example, Netscape stores them in the default \NETSCAPE\CACHE directory. Make sure that your browser uses its cache. It may increase speed considerably!
• Internet's shareware libraries have many tools designed to let you read and use the cached Web pages after your online visit. Look for programs with names like Cache Master and WebSaver.
• Learn how to write your mail offline, and send letters "in a batch" to your mailbox. In addition to the time and cost benefits, your messages are likely to contain fewer typing errors, and be better thought out.
• Consider automating your communication (see Chapter 16). I use a local BBS this way. A while ago, it gave me the following progress report: "Time on: 17 hrs 43 min, today 0 hrs 0 min, total 827 times." In average, I spend around 1.3 minutes per call. The other day, I was connected for 2:48 minutes. The result was 106 kilobytes' worth of conference mail.

Modem speed and cost

2400 bps is a sensible modem speed for some applications, and used to be a good starting point for new onliners. The benefits of using a faster modem may be marginal when

• navigating your favorite service considerably reduces the effective speed, and you access the service manually.
• you pay considerably more for access at higher speed.
• the relative price of a faster modem in your country is prohibitive.
• your network does not offer higher speeds.

On the other hand, a modem doing 14400 bps or more, will give you at least six times faster communication. For some applications, this means much lower costs. Also, if doing things faster is more important than keeping costs down, then it is a wise investment.

If you plan to use the World Wide Web with a graphical browser, then anything slower than 14.400 bits/s will be too slow. You can technically do things with a slower speed, but it is frustrating.

Your applications have a considerable impact on your costs. If you mainly use your modem for retrieval of programs and large data files from bulletin boards - and do not have to pay extra for volume - then higher modem speeds will immediately give reduced costs.
A slower speed modem may also stop you from getting what you want. For example, there are several shareware programs on my board that users of 2400 bps modems are unable to download within their allotted 30 minutes per day.

When you pay for volume

Some network services have high rates for volume, and very low rates for connect time. When using such services, automatic communication becomes less useful. Rather than connecting, getting a piece of information, disconnecting, and then going back for more, you may find it cost efficient to review menus and results while online.
When paying for volume, or per minute connected, the online service's menus become luxury items. Using quick commands for navigating is cheaper. The best is to use a program for fully automatic access.
Your comparisons will never be accurate when comparing with services charging for connect time. It is particularly difficult when the measure of volume is 'packets' rather than 'number of characters transferred'.
For example, Datapak used to report my sessions like this:

    CLR PAD  (00) 00:00:14:55 537 75

These numbers told that I had been connected to a service for 14 minutes and 55 seconds, 537 data 'packets' had been received, and 75 had been sent. Use these figures to calculate the cost of the call.

One data 'packet' or segment contains up to 64 characters. Think of it as a measure of the number of lines. Each line can have a maximum of 64 characters. If you send the character A and a carriage return, then this also counts as a segment. So, it is hard to use the Datapak record to estimate the real number of characters transferred. All we know is that 537 + 75 segments were transferred, and that 612 segments may contain up to 39,168 characters.

When calculating the cost of a direct call in connect charges, just the number of minutes counts. Use the time reported by the online service, and not your stop watch. CompuServe used to give this type of report:

    Thank you for using CompuServe! 
 
    Off at 10:11 EST 24-Nov-92 
    Connect time = 0:15

Set your software to store all incoming information, and use this to find how much data you receive. Run the test several times, and use averages when making your estimates.
It is easy to compare services that only charge by the minute.

More practical hints

It may be more expensive to call a service daily "to check the news," than to call it once per week to retrieve the same stories, if this feature is available.
Navigating by menus is more expensive than going directly to a source, or going there by stacking commands (that is, combining quick commands into one).
Some services let you read selective items in conferences by entering a search string. On RBBS-PC systems, the following comman

    r extended 100+ c

used to let you read all messages containing the search string 'extended' in the body of text, starting with message number 100.
If you forget the "c" parameter, the flow will stop after each message. This will reduce the average effective speed. Always use "nonstop" commands when reading stories, conference items, and other texts.
Now, read Chapter 16.