jerry@olivey.olivetti.com (Jerry Aguirre) (07/19/88)
In article <12143@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) writes: >Are you and I talking about the same newsgroup? It has been pointed out before that there is a large discrepancy between measurements of the propagation, volume, and readership stats for the alt group. I suggest that there is a simple explaination. We are each measuring different things. Because the alt group does not have the general propagation that the normal groups do there is a good chance that an article posted in a particular sub group will not make it cross country to other sites. They may have readers reading that alt group and may pass it to their regional neighbors but that may be as far as it goes. I know that several of my neighbors don't want certain alt groups. They still pass alt.config and others so they are getting "alt" but someone reading news that is feed thru them may be seing a different set of articles. Perhaps some of us could exchange article IDs and find out if this is true.
reid@decwrl.dec.com (Brian Reid) (07/19/88)
In article <25665@oliveb.olivetti.com> jerry@olivey.UUCP (Jerry Aguirre) writes: >Because the alt group does not have the general propagation that the >normal groups do there is a good chance that an article posted in a >particular sub group will not make it cross country to other sites. >They may have readers reading that alt group and may pass it to their >regional neighbors but that may be as far as it goes. I've done this experiment a few times, and to the best of my ability to measure, most alt groups are totally connected. The "fringe" alt groups like alt.birthright are not totally connected, but all of the "ordinary" ones seem to be. About half of the official backbone sites carry every alt group, and all but 3 of the backbone sites carry at least 1 alt group. Virtually every nntp site carries alt groups. Also there is a pretty strong "alt backbone" in place that John Gilmore and I built up before we announced the formation of the alt network. In general it involves smaller machines that you haven't heard of, but it is quite decidedly nationwide. We are a bit reluctant to call it a backbone.