ksj@proper.UUCP (Kent Johnson ) (06/18/84)
I have some suggestions for reducing the amount of traffic on the net.
1. Would it be possible to reduce the amount of overhead in each news
item? The overhead lines added by each site along the transmission path
can add up to a substantial portion of the total message length. Is it
really necessary to keep track of the time, date, posting version, etc. (even
the weather and phase of the moon!) at each site along the way? If this
information is not useful cutting it out would substantially reduce the
transmitted volume on the net without affecting contents at all. Note that
I know nothing about the implementation of the net; if this is a stupid idea
please be gentle.
2. This has been mentioned before--encourage people to use short
signatures! To me there is something obscene about a five or six line
signature added to a three line message, and a cute phrase becomes less
cute after three or four readings. Please use some discretion!
3. Could the address for return mail (i.e. in replying to a news item by
mail) be optimized? An item may pass through 5-10 intermediate sites
and (I think) cross the country several times before getting here to Proper.
If I reply with standard readnews the reply will be mailed back along the
whole path to the poster. Thus my mail crosses the country several times
and passes through many more sites than needed. If readnews could try to
find a better path back to the source it would save a lot of phone calls.
Here at Proper there is a program which will look up a site and find the
best path to it; could such a program be incorporated in readnews?
Perhaps with user override or oversight to handle complex cases.
--Kent Johnson
{ decvax!sun!amd, hplabs!nsc, ihnp4!dual } !proper!ksj