From: utzoo!laura Newsgroups: net.followup Title: mush heads unite -- what good is net.test anyway? Article-I.D.: utzoo.2215 Posted: Tue Jun 29 06:12:18 1982 Received: Tue Jun 29 06:12:18 1982 Sending netnews is not a right which every good north american (oops, austrailian too) has written indelibly upon their sacred constitution and unix license. Netnews is not free. If it were, one could argue that anyone has the right to post anything they want in a news group like "net.test". The last time I checked, though, there was a substantial phone bill which our site had to pay. I have done a quick-and-somewhat-dirty check of what net.test is costing this site, and now am ready to join up on the side of the mush heads. Calls from utzoo (Toronto) to decvax (Merrimac) made after 1200 midnight come at the relativley cheap rate of $0.25 a minute. I just sent a test article to "to.hcr" a group which exists on our site and on hcr, a site that connects to us. It had a simple text "this is test of the cost of net.test". It took 17 seconds (timed from the last digit dialed to the autodialer returning to normal state). I dont know how much of uucp is overhead, but, chop off 2 seconds as overhead (which will make the math easier). 15 seconds is 1/4th of a minute. that means, had that call come from decvax, it would have cost us 8.25 cents. At three net.test articles a night (the mean over the last 2 weeks) that is 24.75 cents. At 30 days a month that is 742.50 cents. This is *very expensive* on a site which up until recently did not have net.space or fa.polisci or fa.armsd on the grounds that *it was too expensive*. Even if I have grossly underestimated the uucp overhead time, if 50% of the cost is uucp overhead, then I still must pay more than $3 a month for the privledge of seeing that site A now talks to site B when, in more than one case, site A is in the *same room* as site B, and in many cases is a local phone call to site B. We have new sites and new polling frequencies and tests in Toronto all the time -- but nobody has to pay for them. On the whole, i cant think of a single reason for net.test's existance -- is there any reason why the *whole net* should see any test message at all? laura creighton decvax!utzoo!laura