First, I'm assuming that this topic is not unique to our institution and so
am asking for a brief description of models at other universities. I'm
willing to make contacts with any referrals you might be willing to share.

Until now, our university has supported the cost of network access, both
within the campus and outside to the internet as a central cost. The cost of
a port was handled much like a phone jack. Each user paid for the connection
through a small charge that is used to pay for wiring as well as the
switches and routers allowing local network and internet access. The cost of
connecting the university network to the internet was supported with central
funds. There is no parallel to 'long distance' phone charges for using the
internet by computer users.

National Science Foundation grants supported a large part of the cost of
connecting to the internet, and now to I2, the high-speed internet. Much of
that development funding will no longer be available in the near future, so
that we are facing a commercial fee for our internet connection that will
rapidly escalate in the next two years. The commercial fee is based on the
volume of traffic to the internet, a statistic that has increased many-fold
every year for the last 5 years. I am assuming we are not unique in facing
rapidly increasing internet costs.

Faced with a California Prop 13-like spending limitation, the university
will no longer support this cost centrally, and is seeking models to
distribute those costs to the user in a manner that will meet federal cost
accounting standards. So far, the fact that the cost may follow the historic
volume increase of many-fold each year makes it difficult to imagine how it
would be possible to include the costs in a stable F&A base. The
administration wants the costs distributed to encourage more efficient use
of switches, web caching etc. to slow the geometric increase in network
traffic through the commercial connection to the internet under the
assumption that charging users will encourage efficiencies.

If any of you are willing to share how your institution allocates network
costs now, and how they might be handled as those costs accelerate in the
future, I would appreciate a brief description of the model.

Regards,
/Ron

===========================
Ron Splittgerber
Director, Research Services
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, Colorado 80523
xxxxxx@Research.Colostate.Edu
P: 970.491.1555
F: 970.491.1151

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