Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version VT1.00C 11/1/84; site vortex.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!mhuxj!houxm!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!vortex!lauren From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) Newsgroups: net.news Subject: receiving vs. sending satellite netnews Message-ID: <475@vortex.UUCP> Date: Tue, 18-Dec-84 17:50:20 EST Article-I.D.: vortex.475 Posted: Tue Dec 18 17:50:20 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 21-Dec-84 02:33:23 EST Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles Lines: 36 [Technical sidenote: the reason that tuning for cabletext is so critical is that the ideal tuning point for receiving the megabit data streams for cabletext is often not the same as for receiving the best picture. One of the very tricky constraints of cabletext is the balancing act regarding the 0 and 1 video levels that are chosen (and must be tracked through all sorts of conditions) to avoid interference with the retrace on the main TV picture -- particularly on older TV's. If the video levels sent for data are not chosen very carefully, you get buzzing and even visual interference on the picture. The end result is that 0 and 1 are much closer together than one would ideally like, and the decoders have to be pretty sophisticated to track the fairly small variation between 0 and 1 (which tends to wobble with time) accurately. The custom IC's that are used for this are usually in a bizarre configuraton that continuously tracks both sync and the current 0/1 levels, and adaptively slices in the middle (on a changing basis) to try get the best data it can. Especially in the light of the damage that many cable companies do to their signals, this tracking gets pretty messy and it must always be done at full video speeds.] --- The current visualization is that people will post to the groups that move on stargate just as they do now to moderated groups. In fact, it is presumed that some of the moderated groups can be fed pretty much "as is" to stargate. Ideally, if the project grew, there would be more mail paths created toward those moderators. The moderators do the actual posting (mostly via direct calls) to stargate. So, to the extent that this technique is used, a given message only has to traverse a single mail path to the moderator and thence to stargate, not be broadcast all over the net by phone. Since any given site RECEIVES *much* more news than it itself generates, the high bandwidth receive, lower bandwidth send nature of this plan would seem to fit well into the traffic patterns we'd expect. --Lauren--