From: sdw@lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: Re: satellite news feed
Date: 14 Dec 1992 15:28:18 GMT
Organization: Local Internet Gateway Co.
Reply-To: sdw@lig.net
NNTP-Posting-Host: bugatti.meaddata.com
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5

Richard Foulk (richard@pegasus.com) wrote:
: >>I would find the downtime issue a problem.  I would think they should move
: >>to compression and offer articles 2-3 times a day to avoid this.
: >
: > We don't see the need for compression at this time. We do re-send the articles
: > since we have several machines dumping articles to a common nfs directory.
: 
: Perhaps you could explain your redundancy scheme in a little more detail.
...
: Richard Foulk		richard@pegasus.com

I've been using this feed for a few months.  It works great.
My system has seen over 3400 newsgroups.

I would expect to download a small number of missed articles, using
slip-on-demand in my case.  The article number messages are the best
source for this, although article id's from garbled or truncated
messages and newnews requests of dialup servers round out the feed.

I am working on crc wrapping of the messages as they are transmitted
and checking on reception.  I'll contribute this shortly.  The current
form is to add a crc check message (with a reused message id) after
each rnews batch section.  News server software aware of the crc check
will perform verification, while other servers will toss the message
as one already seen (after the first).

LIG Co.:

I have started a new company, called Local Internet Gateway Co., to
develop, market, and support what I call LIGs (Local Internet
Gateways).  The lig.net domain has been created and my system is a
prototype.  The idea, basically, is to provide entry level systems
that allow callers very inexpensive access to NetNews, email, etc.
ANYWHERE in the US.  While there is often reasonable and cheap
service in large cities, most medium sized and all small cities are
left out.  Anyone can buy a dish and receiver from Pagesat and
integrate it, but I think that there are many who don't want to (or
can't) put in the hours needed.

I've been working on a turn-key system with a complete news server for
dialup or network use.  The plan is to sell or lease the system as a
very loose franchise.  Continous support and consulting will be
provided.

As a very vague estimate of costs:

$10,000 for system and software.
	(50Mhz 486DX, 2GB HD, 16MB ram, 8 buffered ports, ISC Unix
	(SYSV4 in near future), MST slip/ppp, news software (inn, tin,
	nn, trn, emacs), subdomain of lig.net, etc.

$60-100/mo for email and outgoing news (phone/Internet service).

- 400-3000/mo. saved over traditional news reception (dialup to UUNET,
	etc.: service charges and long distance)

Lease for the system would be about $250/mo. for 5 years.

Each line, at per user: $5/mo + $2/hr., if busy 50%, would bring in
about $700/mo.

Note that $2/hr ($1-$4 would be a reasonable range) would only cover
local access and batched news/mail sending.  Direct Internet access
(ftp, telnet, wais, gopher, irc) is supported but costs $10/hr., which
is the Cerfnet 800 charge.  Since the link is slip, it could be shared
for non-ftp services.

I am setting up Cerfnet as the default Internet provider due to their
800 coverage of the US and commercial policies.

My inn/nnrpd server and tin reader have already been modified to keep
articles in zoo (or similar) archives.  This has allowed me to use,
for 2 weeks of 3400 newsgroups (some 200,000+ messages), less than
30,000 inodes and less than 500MB of space.  The space savings has
been tremendous.  I believe I have overcome the performance problems also.

I have the only compressed, archived news server on the net, as far as
I know!

Please send email if you are interested in any of this.
I won't give a firm release date: it'll be done when it works perfectly.
I hope to have it done by the end of this year, however.

sdw
--
Stephen D. Williams  Local Internet Gateway Co.; SDW Systems 513 496-5223APager
LIG dev./sales       Internet: sdw@world.std.com CIS 76244.210@compuserve.com
OO R&D Source Dist.  By Horse: 10028 Village Tree Ct., Miamisburg, OH 45342
GNU Support          ICBM: 39 34N 85 15W I love it when a plan comes together
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