Net stats?

Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucsd!network.ucsd.edu!weber.ucsd.edu!bjones
From: bjo...@weber.ucsd.edu (Bruce Jones)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Net stats?
Keywords: Volume over time and monthly costs??
Message-ID: <2573@network.ucsd.edu>
Date: 25 Jun 90 00:15:28 GMT
Sender: n...@network.ucsd.edu
Reply-To: bjo...@weber.ucsd.edu (Bruce Jones)
Organization: U.C.S.D. Department of Communication
Lines: 29
Posted: Mon Jun 25 01:15:28 1990
Nntp-Posting-Host: weber.ucsd.edu

I am writing an ethnography of USENET and I would like to incorporate
some figures on the net.   Specifically I am interested in two
areas.  

The first is the change in the volume of traffic on the net over time.
I know that I can get the current figures from the articles in
news.announce.newusers or news.lists.  What I would like are figures
from across the 1980s or figures from a few representative years
between 1979 and the present.

The other thing I am interested in is the monthly cost for the
net's operation, at present and across time.  I remember a few
years ago people talking about the telephone bills for the net and
how it was costing AT&T and DEC hundreds of thousands of dollars
to keep it alive.  My sense is that either this was wrong (or I
remember it wrong) or things have changed.  In any case, is there
any way of accurately talking about the cost of the net?

NOTE: I am **NOT** a newspaper or magazine writer.  I'm a graduate 
student and the paper is part of my research.

Accurate stats or interesting guestimates can be sent to:

bjo...@ucsd.edu

Thanks!
bj

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