kiessig@idi.UUCP (01/24/84)
Since netnews is really broadcast oriented, there should be
a simple way to make use of this fact to massively reduce people's
phone bills. I have a couple of ideas:
1. Dial-in service
There would be a single phone number that could
be called, over which news would be broadcast
at a particular time every day. Something like
a 900 number might work, although it might be
too expensive. I understand that there might be
cheaper ways to accomplish the same thing, and am
pursuing this further with the phone company.
2. Satellite broadcast
Credit for this idea really goes to Lauren. The
notion is to broadcast news over one or more of
the VIR lines of some cooperative cable station.
The first idea would not require any special hardware, and
should be negotiable with the phone company using available
technology. The second idea requires dealing with a cable TV
station asking for a "special" service. Contracts would be needed.
Some dish antennas will be needed, and special decoder boxes will
have to built. In spite of this, the second idea has the potential
of being far cheaper in the long run, especially since there is a
possibility that the VIR space could be donated.
The problem with both of these ideas is that special software
would be required. Standard UUCP won't work in a broadcast mode.
The purpose of this article is to stimulate some discussion on this
idea, and to get some software ideas. One nice thing about idea
number 1 is that sites could take turns exchanging news if a two
way connection is established, and some "Ethernet-like" software
could probably be used. A 900 number or VIRs are both one-way.
--
Rick Kiessig
{decvax, ucbvax}!sun!idi!kiessig
{akgua, amd70, cbosgd, ihnp4, ios}!idi!kiessigrpw3@fortune.UUCP (01/25/84)
#R:idi:-14000:fortune:32200001:000:671
fortune!rpw3 Jan 24 19:27:00 1984
The problem with any broadcast technique is acknowledgements. This is
much worse in the satellite case, since cheap satellite receivers and
even most cable companies provide one-way traffic only.
You would need some fairly high redundancy forward-error-correction
to get "acceptable" reliability. Maybe the method which banks have used
for years with fund transfer would help also, namely, to simply get
what you get and ask the sender (central site) to re-broadcast any
sequence numbers you missed.
Rob Warnock
UUCP: {sri-unix,amd70,hpda,harpo,ihnp4,allegra}!fortune!rpw3
DDD: (415)595-8444
USPS: Fortune Systems Corp, 101 Twin Dolphins Drive, Redwood City, CA 94065