SUBJECT:

Modem Access to Campus Networks - Fee-for-Service Program

Effective July 1, 1996, the network access modem pool maintained by
Network Operations within Academic Computing Services (ACS) will
become a fee-for- service operation. Everyone who currently dials in
to the "free" modem pool to access campus computing systems will pay a
monthly fee.

The introduction of this fee structure is necessitated by the dramatic
increase in modem use. As many of you know, our current service
levels are unacceptable; it is now impossible to dial in successfully
without encountering extensive amounts of busy signals. We now have
11,000 users attempting to use the 300 modems currently available in
the Network Operations modem pool. This ratio of 1 modem to 36 users
vastly exceeds our ideal ratio of 1 modem to 12 users.

User fees will be used to support and expand the modem pool to a level
sufficient to meet the needs of UCSD faculty, staff, and students.
Given the importance of online scholarly information and the role that
technology now plays at UCSD, we must improve considerably our ability
to access computing resources via the network access modem pool.

The base fee will be $10/month. For this monthly base, users will
receive 25 hours of prime time connectivity and unlimited non prime
time connectivity. Users will be billed $.30/hour for additional
prime time use up to a monthly maximum of $50. Prime time is defined
as:

     3:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m. Monday through Friday
     8:00 a.m. - 11:00 p.m. Saturday and Sunday

Users will be billed the base fee only for months in which there is
actual usage; there will be no charge for months with no use.

Before deciding to implement a fee-based service, we pursued a variety
of other funding options. Our initial step was to find an ongoing
source of funding to support adequately our current user base and
dramatically escalating volumes of traffic. Funding of over $1 million
per year would need to be identified; needless to say, we were
unsuccessful in locating this amount of money on an ongoing basis.
Remote access could also be contracted to a commercial Internet service
provider, as many of our sister campuses are now doing. Current remote
access users would then need to become users of one of the Internet
service providers in the area. After reviewing prices and service
levels that were available locally from a variety of Internet service
providers, we decided to offer a fee-based remote access service. ACS
staff believe that they can offer a reliable service that compares
favorably with services provided by commercial Internet service
providers, given that there already exists a substantial investment on
campus in the current modem pool.

More detailed information, plus frequently asked questions with
answers, is available on the ACS Network Operations home page:

http://www-no.ucsd.edu:9323/RAV.html

We will continue to monitor developments in telecommunications and
networking as they occur in the field. If at any point it appears
that a less-expensive, high quality network access service becomes
available from a different provider, we will certainly migrate to such
a service.

Please send comments, questions, or suggestions to Tony Wood,
Director, Academic Computing Services (twood@ucsd.edu).

Gerald R. Lowell Associate Vice Chancellor - Academic Information Technology