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From: ron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie )
Newsgroups: net.news.group,net.news.adm
Subject: Re: Saving the net
Message-ID: <491@brl-sem.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 5-Nov-85 16:34:56 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-sem.491
Posted: Tue Nov  5 16:34:56 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 7-Nov-85 06:21:08 EST
References: <639@lasspvax.UUCP>
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab
Lines: 18
Xref: watmath net.news.group:4327 net.news.adm:411

I'm not going to include any of this discussion because it was long
and incorrect.  The author makes several invalid assumptions.

1.  Netnews flows in a true tree like fashion.
	Wrong, net news can and sometimes is richly connected.

2.  The major expense of backbone sites is distribution to local
    sites.
	No, not quite.  Many people poll the backbone sites and
	other local sites for news.  Remembering the original UUCP
	paper, you can divide the net in to three classes of hosts:
	Rich hosts (with autodialers), Cheap hosts (incoming modems
	only), and Paranoid hosts (no modems).  Handling news on
	any host is a major load regardless of which way the charging
	on the phone lines go.  In addition, the backbones are still
	paying for the high expense backbone node to backbone node calls.

-Ron