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From: b2@magic.UUCP (Bryan Bingham)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.group
Subject: Re: Possible cost saving method for backbone sites
Message-ID: <639@magic.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 7-Nov-85 21:54:08 EST
Article-I.D.: magic.639
Posted: Thu Nov  7 21:54:08 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 10-Nov-85 04:00:40 EST
References: <18@Cascade.ARPA>
Distribution: net
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Inc, Morristown, NJ
Lines: 58
Xref: linus net.news:3506 net.news.group:3738

> The major argument for discontinuing some of the more voluminous
> groups is the cost to backbone sites to transmit all the news.  Has
> anyone investigated the technique of putting news on magnetic tape
> and Federal Express-ing it to other sites?

      Such a scheme is very unattractive because it requires manual 
      work to be done by netnews administraters.  And although it
      may indeed cost only about $20 to send a tape w/Fed. Xpress,
      one must also count the time the persons at either end have 
      to take to load the tape, dump old messages off it, write new ones
      on, unload the tape, then repackage it for Fed. Xpress.
      Someone must also be responsible for deleting old messages on
      the tape -- this suggests that a ring of people would be required,
      the tapes would be tokens passing around the ring until it returned
      to the originator who would take old messages off the tape.
      What if the ring is broken?  

      Paying for doing things this way may be a hassle for many.
      Its easy to hide netnews costs when one gets one bill for
      use of a single telephone line. Managers seem resigned
      to the fact that computers like to talk to each other for
      long periods of time.  Thus we have been able to get away
      with passing huge amounts of traffic back and forth accross
      the country several times without money problems, until recently.
      A sudden jump in Federal Express costs, on the other hand, might
      cause some uncomfortable scrutinizing of the exact purpose for
      the luxury of using a rather expensive transport service instead
      of good old 4th class mail or parcel post.
      One might be able to convince middle-managers that that is cheaper
      than the alternative of paying a large phone bill, but they might
      say "is it cheaper than not doing it at all?"

      I'm not saying that there are no circumstances where tape transport
      would be appropriate -- Australia got its fix of netnews that way for
      a time, and if you're already sending tapes hither and yon for
      a research project or whatever, it probably will cost very very little
      to include a batch of news on the end of "real" data.  As a standard
      mode of transport for the backbone though, I think tapes just won't
      cut it.

      I think that the only solution to the overload problem that doesn't
      involve newsgroup deletion is for the backbone to try, if humanly
      possible, to arrange minimum cost links, and to upgrade to the
      highest possible speed modems available.  This would require them
      to settle on a standard model, such as the Telebit 10Kb modem, and
      then prove to their management that it would be cheaper to shell out
      for them now then to continue to send news using the 212's they bought
      as a cost-saving measure 3 years ago. 

      "But this is only a stopgap!" people will say.  I say "So what?"
      If most sites spend even a small amount of money and get 2.4Kb
      modems, their phones bill savings for netnews alone will cover 
      the cost of the modem after a year or so, maybe less.

      b2 ihnp4!bellcore!b2 b2@bellcore.com

      "People yakkitty-yak all day, to pass the time of day,
       but Mr. Ed will never speak, unless he has something to say!"