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!kiessig
rpw3@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