From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: News Feed (LONG)
Organization: Taronga Park BBS
Distribution: houston
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 04:19:49 GMT

In article <w434TB2w165w@medley.ssdl.com> bert@medley.ssdl.com writes:
>peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
>> No, we don't. We need to balance the flow better. We need to keep people
>> from saying "I've got a 760M disk, so I can carry everything". You should
>> only feed the groups you and sites you're feeding want. Duplicating feeds
>> is useful, up to a point, but the main problem is balance.

>But if you examine the numbers the "root" systems will be getting a primary
>full feed and backup feed/downstream feed with *A VERY FEW LIMITED NUMBER
>OF PARTIAL FEEDS*.  The problem isn't balance it's volume!

You think so? Why? Perhaps we need to do the numbers better, but I can't
see any site taking more than a small fraction of the groups if they don't
need to worry about responsiveness from their feed. Plus, how many root
systems do you think we'll get?

Can you justify this with numbers?

>> So give everyone all the groups they want. If they want something different,
>> then change what you're feeding them. If that's done fast enough you won't
>> get people getting everything "just in case".

>And if everyone wants all the news?

The people who want all the news, for whatever reason, can damn well pay
for it and feed one or two sites.

>Again, the problem IS volume.

Only for people who want the volume. People who don't can easily get a
partial feed.

>Works only if the site has a dedicated line for anonymous UUCP and BBS-type
>logins as the other modem will be totally tied up pushing news and mail around.

Will it? Figure out the volume in comp.sources and get back to me.

>I would feel veeeerrryyyy unhappy if someone messed around with my map or
>site connectivity.

If you pull stupid tricks you deserve to be unhappy.

>So will most sysops.  This will lead to general discontent
>and flames...you kiled my site so I'll kill yours.

I think Stan is responsible enough to quench that sort of thing.

>The need arises from an incorrect map maintained by a newbie or
>SOB sysop.  Again, enforcement will be difficult.

We have a single central place for "authorized" houston map entries,
and the person running them is a reasonable guy. You find a bad guy,
let Stan know that this entry is causing a problem.

>Let's look at those INTERNET mail gateways for a second.  I think that there
>are at most 4 reliable INTERNET mail gateways with fast modem connections and
>two of these are pay sites.

I don't know about Nuchat but sugar can't MX. That leaves 4 (nuchat, maybe,
and uhnix1 and rice and bcm).

>All other INTERNET connections have not 
>volunteered to act as contributing members of the UUCPnet community to any 
>large degree.  How many "free" INTERNET sites can you name that will connect
>any site in for mail

I'm one hop away and I'll let any individual hook up for mail. I monitor
this system continually, and I'm pretty damn good at catching problems.

>and a limited news feed (or even a full one)?

Why do you want your news feed from an INTERNET site?

Why are you being so negative, without even giving this a try?
-- 
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