Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mandrill!gatech!bloom-beacon!mit-vax!mit-eddie!bbn!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ic.Berkeley.EDU!faustus From: faustus@ic.Berkeley.EDU (Wayne A. Christopher) Newsgroups: news.misc Subject: Re: "NNTP has had a number of very bad effects on the net..." Message-ID: <4414@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> Date: 11 Jul 88 21:31:00 GMT References: <1830@looking.UUCP><4277@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu Lines: 28 It seems like NNTP has had two effects -- it has made news cheaper, because it's more effecient and it makes it easier for news to go over the internet, but on the other hand it's made news a lot quicker, thus increasing volume. The first is good, obviously, but the second is bad. I've posted things, seen followups from the East Coast, posted followups to them, and seen more followups to my followups all in one night. While this may make discussions a lot easier, they're very bad for volume. Since we don't have the old bandwidth constraints (uucp batching, etc), I think we should create some new ones. How about adding a re-transmission delay into the news software, so that an article would wait at a particular site for at least a few hours (say) before being sent out again? That way, the high-bandwidth newsgroups would have discussions with delays of a few days or so, instead of an hour or two. We could set different delays for different newsgroups, so that cancel messages and "timely" groups like comp.risks and *.announce would move quickly, whereas soc.singles and comp.lang.c could move more slowly. For binary and source groups it wouldn't make much of a difference, since they don't contain followups. The problem with this is that discussions would arrive at people at widely different times, and there would be a lot more followups about things that for most people are weeks old. Does this sound sensible? Wayne