From: jbass@igor.tamri.com (John Bass)
Subject: Re: UUNET slowness (was Netcom slowness)
Organization: DMS Design
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 92 16:59:36 GMT


> From: rick@rodan.UU.NET (Rick Adams)
> Dear Children,

insult negatively acknowledged! Quite childish I say to flame as you
did ... uunet is a business, EXPECT unhappy paying customers to BITCH!

> 
> The claims that uunet intentionally reduces throughput are just
> unsubstantiated bullshit.

I did not make this claim, nor have I seen other postings that have.

> 
> The facts are that overall uucp throughput has increased about 30% since
> the beginning of the year. This is measured as megabytes transferred per day
> divided by connect hours per day to get a daily "throughput" number.

Nice statistic, but totally insignificant to the topic at hand. I assume
the merit of this claim lies more in your customers switching to faster
modems.

In any case, my bitch was:

	1) excessively long response times to login/passwd resulting in
	   failed connects due to dialer timeouts ... Increased costs
	   for uunet on the 800 number borne by all users, increased
	   long distance costs for non-800 customers. This also is
	   an indication of the excessive system loading of UUNET.

	2) excessively poor uucp thruput measured as a percentage of the
	   EXPECTED Telebit PEP/UUCP thruput in comparison to other sites
	   my site has connected with. Increased uunet charges for
	   all customers, plus increased long distance costs for non-800
	   customers. This also is an indication of the excessive system
	   loading of UUNET.

So rather than insult us, please respond the ISSUES!

> We continue to work on ways to increase it but are hamstrung by
> the grossly inadequare serial cards available for the Sequent and Sun systems.
> We continue to investigate alternatives.

Excuses, excuses, excuses ....

> 
> As for incentive arguments, if you pay me a flat rate regardless of
> connect time, I have no incentive to add modems or provide adequate
> computer facilities.
> 
> The sword cuts both ways.
> 
> However, if you pay by the hour, then YOU have the incentive to
> buy a high speed modem and make good use of the system and thereby
> allow more use of the UUNET fixed assets, thereby allowing more people
> to be served by the same fixed assets.  Thats why we charge by the hour.

I have a high speed modem ... and UUNET is not capable (from my limited
experience) of reaching it's capabilities ...

I think flat-rate is wrong as well ... but I do pay by the hour and
EXPECT better service ... ignoring the disclaimer in my contract that says
you are not obligated to provide any certain level of service.

> 
> If you are unhappy with the value received for your money, then by all means
> go elsewhere. However, don't make petty and unsubstantiated claims about
> people trying to screw you.

My claim is not petty, and it is not acceptable to just brush off paying
customers with "If you are unhappy with the value received for your money,
then by all means go elsewhere".

I may have been hasty in assuming that other customers were getting the
same level of service, but I hardly view my claims as trivial as
"unsubstantiated". When I first raised this issue with uunet staff
last winter, I asked for transfer stats from uunet to validate uunet's
ability to provide the expected level of service. This request was
denied ... as expected.

Since YOU will not address the problem, then hopefully WE can help.

Other uunet customers, please if your uucp logs chars/sec please post your
min, max, mean, and stddev values for all file transfers over 15k covering
a weeks worth of traffic.  Also post the min, max, mean, and stddev
values for the service time of small files (log time between consecutive
transfers). Also if you are local to a direct dial hub, use cu to sample
login -> passwd -> Shere response times at various times of the day/nite. 
It would be better for UUNET to provide these figures directly, since
our survey will likely error on the poorer side.

A periodic summary of such results across all the service providers
might be an interesting "consumer report".

What starting my bitching last year was uunet's refusal to filter out mail
traffic routed thru DMSD. I wanted them to ONLY forward mail with a terminal
address at dmsd (dmsd.com). My site was being flooded with a high volume of
traffic passing thru UUNET/DMSD link due to automated mail routers ... this
depleted my lowvolume account in a couple months. And left me with a
several hundred dollar unexpected bill ... having a UUNET account is
like publicly posting your VISA/MC account number for any high school or
college student to use for "free" access to automated file archive
services. UUNET's response was not to help the customer ... it was
accept it or leave buddy.

The whole reason we started uunet was to have a central hub that all
uucp sites could connect to ... to remove the finacial burden on a decreasing
number of backbone/well connected sites. Given the bredth of the internet
and the number of well connected for fee uucp service providers, we
should no longer be required to be "good uucp hosts" and accept or pass thru
un-wanted mail traffic.

If your site would also like to reduce it's uunet/phone bill ... send a
message to Rick also asking for uunet to provide the "SERVICE" for this
type of selective mail forwarding.

Maybe what we need to form at the next USENIX is a UUNET CUSTOMER USERGROUP
to formalize out complaints.

What is the correct forum to take this discussion outside the bay area and
involve more UUNET customers?

John Bass
DMS Design
Newsgroups: ba.internet