[OT-ish] How big is the UK 'net?

[Peter Fairbrother]

Ken Brown wrote:

> Peter Fairbrother wrote:
>=20
> [...]
>=20
>> How much would it cost the single central server for the connectivity? T=
he
>> server itself would cost around #10 million, how much do you think peopl=
e
>> would pay for truly anonymous email?
>=20
> Nothing, I'm afraid :-(

Perhaps nowadays people are becoming more aware that their mail can be
recorded, and the traffic data stored forever...

>> How many people have broadband?
>=20
> Very few except at places of work. And when people say "broadband" in
> the UK they usually fall for the hype and mean ADSL (which I personally
> don't expect to take off, BT will continue to sit on it timidly the way
> they sat on ISDN, which they delayed for so long it was near obsolete
> before most people could afford it). Still nothing like the kind of
> network speeds most workplaces and colleges now have.

I have ADSL, my local exchange was enabled last month. Great, I get 60kB/s
download, and ftp'd 6GB in 5,000+ little bitty files, with time waiting
between files, in 24 hrs. This may change though if lots of people start
signing up. Hey, it's =A315/mth for dialup and =A330/mth for adsl, 12 times the
speed for twice the cost...

>=20
> Your email scheme presumably involved large outgoing volumes  ad well as
> incoming? Not good for ADSL (Part of the point of ADSL - almost the
> whole point, really - is to throttle user's ability to send. It is the
> favourite protocol of the Murdochs and the cable TV companies and the
> big record companies who want us to be able to download large files from
> them, but not to be able to serve files to anyone else).

Within reason it doesn't matter which way the bulk of the traffic goes,
there is a tradeoff, except for about 40 MB/day. In fact, if I could
broadcast 300MB/day I could probably eventually get the remaining traffic
down to about 40MB/day or so, half each way, with a bit of fiddling.
 =20



Ian Brown wrote:
[...]
>=20
> I think it's only economic to do proper traffic analysis protection (ie w=
ith
> high levels of cover traffic) if you can get access to bandwidth at its
> marginal cost -- near zero on a non-congested link. Which means you proba=
bly
> need to be a telco :(

But wouldn't you then be required to provide interception capability? Not
that it would matter, you couldn't identify or trace mail even if you wante=
d
to, that's the point of the scheme.



Ah well, back to the drawing board. Getting closer!

-- Peter Fairbrother