Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!faline!thumper!ulysses!andante!princeton!udel!rochester!bbn!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!tetra!budden From: budden@tetra.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.os.cpm Subject: Re: Posting 8 bit sources and binaries Message-ID: <688@tetra.NOSC.MIL> Date: 4 Jun 88 01:11:41 GMT References: <136@lakart.UUCP> <62820002@hpl-opus.HP.COM> Reply-To: budden@tetra.nosc.mil.UUCP (Rex A. Buddenberg) Organization: USCG, Washington DC Lines: 31 Posted: Fri Jun 3 21:11:41 1988 The users of the 'arpa' side of the internet and the 'non-arpa' are probably equally heterogeneous (myself, I'm actually on the mil side). So saying the usenet user needs are different from an arpanet/simtel20 user is making a distinction where there probably isn't any. The problem is one of network abuse and capacity consumption. If you post things like binaries, all those newsgroup sites get tons of bits, whether the users want them or not. The solution within arpanet was to use simtel20 -- you only use the network capacity you need to download what you want. Unfortunately, we are running into a problem. Defense Communications Agency, which operates both the arpa and mil parts of DDN isn't really in the business of providing us comms services as a free good. In a year or so, we will all be paying packet charges for the services -- DCA has to pass the costs back to the users. One of the unanswered questions is how you manage repositories like Simtel20 or CU20B -- the costing algorithm does not account for this at all. Nobody in DCA really wants to kill them, but they don't have a decent way to keep them providing the services. Worse, while we can all see the benefits of these bboards, they will be difficult to justify too -- who pays the packet charges for bboard traffic? The poster? If the reader is to incur them, he will have to pay whether he actually reads or not. Sticky. So when Keith enforces the discipline, there are some very good reasons. Rex Buddenberg