Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!husc6!cmcl2!nrl-cmf!ames!killer!ssbn!bill
From: bill@ssbn.WLK.COM (Bill Kennedy)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: How to eliminate the cost of over 1/5 (or more) of net traffic
Keywords: stargate moderated news
Message-ID: <196@ssbn.WLK.COM>
Date: 11 May 88 14:12:25 GMT
References: <1616@looking.UUCP> <719@fig.bbn.com>
Reply-To: bill@ssbn.UUCP (Bill Kennedy)
Distribution: na
Organization: W.L. Kennedy Jr. and Associates, Pipe Creek, TX
Lines: 58

In article <719@fig.bbn.com> rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) writes:
>In news.admin (<1616@looking.UUCP>), brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
>>The important thing to remember is that binaries, sources and maps are
>>not urgent, time-critical stuff.
>
>If this is the criteria, then we could save 90% of the current costs.
>
>The important thing to remember is that almost nothing that appears on
>Usenet is urgent, time-critical stuff.

That is a pretty decent recommendation for alternate delivery methods for
the less time critical/more bulky groups.  Naturally, I'm inclined towards
Stargate because that's where all of my moderated groups come from.  It's
easy enough to do and I hear that they are going to post an article soon
that will explain what they are going to do.

There are some delivery alternatives that could be explored and they should
not be too difficult to manage.  If your uucico is smart enough to handle
the "grades", you could give a lower grade to the bulky stuff so that it would
not go out as a matter of routine.  My former news feed had my news graded
such that he would call me on demand with mail but news would only leave when
I called.  That was entirely satisfactory (I only have one connection that is
a toll free call).

If you are using batched sends, the sendbatch could be smart enough to defer
scheduling bulky stuff until lower rates were in effect, like all day Saturday.
That would be an additional benefit to the other users during "prime time"
because there would be less competition for cycles.  The change to sendbatch
is rather trivial, just toss certain groups back into the batch spool if the
time of day isn't right.

Finally, for those blessed with a higher speed modem, some technique could
be developed to let the bulky groups only go to fast connections during
"prime time".  That would be a little more difficult than only chosing a
cheaper time, but if you had sendbatch on the table, already cut open...

I think that satellite delivery makes a lot of sense for the "long haul"
trips.  I'm not sure how to inject the stuff into the satellite carrier,
but assuming that's easy and done (the current Stargate feed is off of
emory, so net bandwidth is already taken up to get it there), it could work
this way.  No site would pass a moderated group long distance unless it
wanted to.  The first backbone to get a moderated group would pass it on
to the satellite carrier and be done with it.  Major metropolitan areas
would have satellite subscribers who would make local distributions much
as they do now.  Sites out in the boondocks (like ssbn) would be responsible
for their own satellite subscriptions but would still use dial-up to get
the rest (that's how ssbn functions now).

A number of benefits would accrue from one or more of these suggestions.
The propagation delays for more timely traffic would be shorter, long
distance charges would be more reasonably spent for the smaller volume
articles.  No, I don't know what to do about high volume unmoderated
groups, ssbn's solution is to not post to them or pay to get them.  I am
ignoring that part of the problem (so I don't have to hide behind it).

-- 
Bill Kennedy  usenet      {rutgers,ihnp4!killer,cbosgd}!ssbn!bill
              internet    bill@ssbn.WLK.COM