From: system@precipice.chi.il.us (Vikki Welch)
Newsgroups: comp.bbs.waffle
Subject: News feed problems...
Date: Thu, 08 Oct 92 11:03:35 CDT
Distribution: world
Organization: Welch Research, McHenry IL, USA

Hi All,

  Things here seem to be fairly settled down and running smoothly
with Waffle, but I have an "operational" problem that I need to
resolve and am not at all sure what my options are or where to
even start looking (newbie alert ;-).  To be honest, I don't know
for sure that what I am experiencing isn't "normal" (godess, I
HATE that word <grin>).

  I have problems(?) with my news feed.  The feed in and of
itself isn't expensive all things considered ($50/yr).  The
problems are that it is almost impossible to get through to it
during non-prime phone rate billing time.  When I do get through
the modems seem to frequently not respond (I have the -t option
in uucico set to 120 for this site) and I have been told that the
site is probably heavily loaded (3b2/400 I think with at least
three modems on it).  I suspect that may well be true as
throughput is, not infrequently, poor (fidonet connects and other
things frequently go to about 1600cps and this is usually around
850+).  I *can* usually get through and throughput isn't too bad
during "prime time" when rates are 60% higher.  I am not
absolutely sure about this, but I might well be able to do this
long distance cheaper(?) with the phone rates being sky high in
this area.

  I am not sure that this isn't another problem, but being into
amateur radio we watch for reports on propagation and auroral
activity, etc. and these things are days old (after the fact) by
the time this information reaches us.  I don't know if this is
normal or if it is just the propagation delay through the path
that news takes to reach here.

  I have tried polling at various times starting about 2100 and
polling through the night at 1, 5, 10 and 15 minute intervals.
Not infrequently running through the limits on the shell script
(100 iterations of BUSY or up to three iterations of answer with
no response - I don't want to be calling 100 times at at about
20 cents a shot when the modems aren't answering or the machine is so
heavily loaded that they don't respond).  I just checked on the
\waffle\admin\uucico file (56k) and in the last 6 days I have
polled 140 times (about 10-15 of those have been calls to the
mail machine - no, news is not available there :). The script was
terminated three times for failure other than BUSY (no answer /
no response three times).  Connects range from a low of 45 cps
for X packets to an max (1 data packet) of 910 cps.  Night
connects seem to range from 250 - 425 cps.  I have a 9600
v32bis/v42bis modem and the site (14400, Zoom sez :) I am polling
has a TB2500 (I think it is) which only gives 9600 connects
anyway.

  With several days going by upon occasion without getting
through (or polling during prime time, which I try to avoid),
please email to me as that is a separate path that is relatively
trouble free.

  What options are there ?  I have heard of something called
uunet, but I have gotten the impression that they are very
expensive and most likely not local.

  Any suggestions on this matter would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

Take care, Vikki.