wmartin@brl-vgr.UUCP (05/08/84)
As far as I know right now, USENET news feeds are done on a courtesy basis, one site allowing another to call them to get the news items. As uucp becomes proliferated into the micro world, it seems likely that the sheer number of machines trying to get news feeds would overwhelm this informal arrangement, even with the heirarchical nature of the feed mechanism. At some time, it would seem likely that access to USENET news would be made available on a commercial basis -- a site advertising that they will feed news to you for $n per connect minute or some other accounting method. Does this yet exist? If not, is anybody planning to set up such a service? Will
topher@cyb-eng.UUCP (05/08/84)
> As far as I know right now, USENET news feeds are done on a courtesy > basis, one site allowing another to call them to get the news items. > As uucp becomes proliferated into the micro world, it seems likely > that the sheer number of machines trying to get news feeds would > overwhelm this informal arrangement, even with the heirarchical > nature of the feed mechanism. :-) As far as I know right now, children births are done on a courtesy :-) basis, one set of parents allowing another to be born from them. :-) As having been born becomes more popular, it seems likely :-) that the sheer number of babies trying to get born would :-) overwhelm this informal arrangement, even with the hierarchical :-) nature of the parent mechanism. But seriously folks, I can see a problem if a lot of non-expert installations want to get feeds but aren't willing to give them. The issue becomes a problem if the ratio of such ungenerous machines to generous machines exceeds the reasonable news-feed fan-out count in some locale. But this is one catastrophe I'm going to worry about when it arrives, and not until. Cheers, Topher Eliot Cyb Systems, Austin, TX {seismo, allegra, ihnp4}!ut-sally!cyb-eng!topher
phil@amd70.UUCP (Phil Ngai) (05/09/84)
There is one way of insuring that there is always a feed for a new
site: demand that they take one of your neighbors off your hands.
This works no matter what kind of neighbors you have. If your neighbor
wishes to maintain the direct connection to you then they have to
take the new site.
--
Phil Ngai (408) 749-5286 {ucbvax,decwrl,ihnp4,allegra,intelca}!amd70!phildmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale) (05/11/84)
When uucp (and large enough disks) start proliferating in the micro world, I think the demand for news feeds will be much less of a problem than handling the sheer volume of traffic it will generate. The last time I looked, the news volume was about 5Mb/week, which takes a substantial fraction of the overnight hours to receive and redistribute at 1200 baud. When Waterloo first joined USENET about 2.5 years ago, the volume was maybe 1Mb/week. Ordinary growth of the network among primarily "large" (multi-user) sites has resulted in this increase in traffic; I hate to think of what will happen when large numbers of micros get on the net.
bytebug@pertec.UUCP (05/12/84)
An interesting question... If a site decides to distribute news on a commercial basis, what about the site(s) who call (or are called) to get the news to distribute? Indirectly then, all the sites around the country who are distributing news and are footing the bills are going to be ripped off. That sounds an awful lot like Fred Jones taking a piece of software I've placed into the Public Domain and selling it. I would suggest that this is NOT something we'd like to encourage. -roger long pertec computer corp