Acca.242
net.news
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!p-btempl@CCA-UNIX
Sun Dec 27 23:52:48 1981
Policies etc
It is amazing to see the recent growth of the USENET in the past 6 months.
I wonder if it might be possible to look into the use of public networks
to reduce costs here and there.  Many sites pay for long distance charges
to run the net.  Some do it unofficially or semi so, but others have the
blessings of those with the bucks.  It is those sites who can help reduce
the cost.  For the long haul, the public networks should be cheaper than
the phone, with the advantage that they can be used any time of day.
In Canada, datapac runs only about $4/hour during the day which is quite
reasonable.  I know telenet is more expensive, but it drops at night.
The problem with these nets is that they all don't allow the raw data path
that uucp wants.  This means we would have to have somebody who knows the
protocols modify the software for this.  Many sites have people sign on all
day over these nets as a matter of course.  news usually takes about 30 mins
per day at 1200 bps, so this cost is quite low.  I'd like to see this happen
so we can forget about a lot of these issues until we grow another order
of magnitude.

One other thing that springs to mind is the idea of digests.  Normally,
they don't make much sense on a distributed network such as ours, although
all the ARPA folks use them for the major newsgruoups.
I am sure we could get editors (although I suspect they would have to be
at some of the major nodes like Berkeley, decvax or btl) to run these things.
The have the disadvantage that they would increase net traffic about 1.5 times
for these groups, depending on the location of the editor, and would have
a similar delay in turnaround.  It would reassure people about their
sbeing shocked though.

On the charging for news issue:  I know it's nasty, but some sites do
support netnews on shoestring budgets, and can't really afford to fly
it around.  Naturally, such charging should be by mutual agreement only.
Right now, certain generous sites help a lot - but that can't be a complete
solution.

		Season's Greetings to all.
			Brad Templeton (p-btempl@cca-unix)
				   or  (decvax!watmath!bstempleton)

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