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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!cmcl2!seismo!hao!hplabs!oliveb!Glacier!Cascade!asente
From: asente@Cascade.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.group
Subject: Possible cost saving method for backbone sites
Message-ID: <18@Cascade.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 5-Nov-85 15:52:27 EST
Article-I.D.: Cascade.18
Posted: Tue Nov  5 15:52:27 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 10-Nov-85 08:25:27 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: Stanford University CIS Apple Orchard
Lines: 26
Xref: watmath net.news:4303 net.news.group:4384

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?

Advantage:
	It is much cheaper!  Discounting the cost of the tapes (which can be
	reused, after all), it costs less than $20 to Federal Express a tape.
	Even if you add in the cost of having someone manually mount the
	tape, I still think you win big.

Disadvantages:
	Sending news now requires more manual intervention than it does
	now.

	News will take, on the whole, longer to propogate.  Sites could
	decide which groups are sufficiently important to be sent by phone
	lines and which are unimportant enough to suffer an extra day's
	delivery time.

I think this is an idea worth at least considering.

	-paul asente
	    asente@Cascade.ARPA		decwrl!Glacier!Cascade!asente

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of magnetic tapes.