roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) (05/10/86)
In article <255@chronon.chronon.UUCP> eric@chronon.UUCP (Eric
Black) discusses the proper procedures for getting (via e-mail) big files
that you missed when they were posted. To drive his point home even
further, let me explain what happened here a while ago.
A while ago, we were looking to get rn running here, so we posted
one of those typical "does anybody have the rn sources" messages. Somebody
out there saw it and decided to just mail the whole (roughly 1.5 Mbyte)
package to us. I'm sure he intended well, but he mispelled the account
name at this end.
So, it all gets here (via some path ending in ihnp4!allegra!phri)
and promptly gets sent back as undeliverable without us even being aware it
got here. Between the time he sent it and it got sent back, the site just
on the other side of ihnp4 went down so everything sat at ihnp4 for a few
days. Eventually ihnp4 spat out it's usual "your messages hasn't been
delivered yet, if you would like to cancel it..." warning which includes
the text of the message that was delayed.
The first I even knew the sources had been sent was when I got all
the 1.5 Mbytes of stuff plopped in my uucp mailbox with the warning from
ihnp4! All this stuff had gone back and forth between ihnp4 and here
*three* times, all for no good reason.
That month, we had the biggest volume in and out of allegra for a
non-att site. The folks at allegra were pretty good about it, but I'm sure
they were a lot more pissed than they let on, and I don't blame them.
That was also the same month sombody decided to send about 10
Mbytes worth of stuff through here via a link we have with pesnta on the
west coast. I would guess that we average about 5 minutes of phone time a
week with pesnta. Not that month! Our business office checks out the top
few long distance phone calls each month to keep a lid on phone abuse.
That month uucp hit the #1 spot. Our comptroller dialed the number on the
bill and was quick enough to recognize that a modem answered and came to me
to find out why I made a 5-hour call to California. I assured him it was a
fluke, and we're still on the net.
So, the moral is think before you mail (or post!) anything big. Go
for magtape if it can possibly stand a couple days delay (you can't beat
$2.54 in the contental US for a 600' reel of tape holding something like 10
Mbytes). If that's too slow, try Federal Express and mag tape. Still too
slow? Set up a direct, temporary uucp connection and pay for the phone
call yourself.
--
Roy Smith, {allegra,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016