mike@peregrine.UUCP (Mike Wexler) (11/05/85)
Some of the backbone sites are complaining about huge phone bills. I agree
that they have the write to do anything they want to control costs. I also
believe that they have the best interests of the net in mind or they
wouldn't be backbone sites in the first place. If they are presented with
a method of cutting there costs substantially and not cut down on the service
they provide, I am sure they will use that method.
Assuming that the phone bills at backbone sites are so large because they
get/send all the articles on the network mutiple times over long distance
lines, a solution would be to only send/receive the articles once.
A method to accomplish this is as follows:
1. Non-backbone sites call the backbone first
2. When to backbone sites are communicating, only articles that one site has
and the other doesn't are sent.
a. Both backbone sites would send one ihave article lising all new
articles at that sites. (i.e. 773@whuxl.UUCP, 1231@ames.UUCP,
1798@gatech.CSNET, etc...)
b. Both backbone sites would send one sendme article listing all articles
that need to be sent.
c. The two sites would send the articles to each other.
Using this technique a backbone:
1. only pays for article transferred between backbones.
2. only pays once for each article received, and only receive a particular
article once.
3. gets articles through local sites whenever possible.
Some drawbacks to this technique are:
1. Somebody has to modify the netnews software.
2. 3 phone calls would need to be made for each backbone-backbone connection.
I am not very familiar with the internals of inews and rnews and I don't have
time to do this write now, but with all the sites paying $100,000 phone bills,
it someone should find it worthwhile to do this.
Please send comments to me and I will summarize.
--
Mike Wexler
(trwrb|scgvaxd)!felix!peregrine!mike (714)855-3923