Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site adobe.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!oliveb!Glacier!adobe!greid From: greid@adobe.UUCP (Glenn Reid) Newsgroups: net.news.group Subject: Let's talk about phone bills Message-ID: <779@adobe.UUCP> Date: Sat, 26-Oct-85 16:40:18 EST Article-I.D.: adobe.779 Posted: Sat Oct 26 16:40:18 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 27-Oct-85 10:36:08 EST Organization: Adobe Systems, Palo Alto Lines: 29 This is all very interesting to me. I am undecided who is right and who is being paranoid. One of the big issues seems to be: "If we don't curb this sort of thing now, the whole net will collapse". Is this true? Is is necessary that news feeds be so centralized, the result being that they cannot *afford* to propagate the news? It strikes me that there are a large number of sites on USENET, and that the connectivity is relatively low. This means that a lot of the news gets sent from Boston to San Francisco between two "backbone" sites who incur all the phone bills, then gets locally distributed to all the smaller sites who read it, post flames, and run up the phone bills of the "hub" sites. This is an oversimplification, of course, but tends to be true. Question: What gains can be made in terms of more carefully chosen news connections? Can they be maintained separately from regular uucp/mail connections? (I doubt it). Maybe I don't have the big picture (I *know* I don't have the big picture) but maybe some gains can be made in other ways than nuking newsgroups so that the wants of the many are not serviced at the expense of the few. Comments? Glenn Reid decwrl!adobe!greid -- You have new mail.