Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnewsh!wcs
From: wcs@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (Bill Stewart 201-949-0705 ho95c.att.com!wcs)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: How to speed up uucp with Telebits(only getting 800 chars/sec )
Message-ID: <2402@cbnewsh.ATT.COM>
Date: 19 Jul 89 15:30:38 GMT
References: <11535@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> <200038@hrc.UUCP> <1160@intercon.UUCP> <1162@intercon.UUCP> <13839@ncoast.ORG>
Reply-To: wcs@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (Bill Stewart 201-949-0705 ho95c.att.com!wcs)
Organization: News Busters
Lines: 31

Two years ago I did a lot of work benchmarking UUCP over the
then-current generation of Telebits, over a variety of transmission
conditions.  I was using an HP 68020 box in New Jersey.
I was able to get about 1300 char/second talking to hoptoad, John
Gilmore's Sun-3 in SF; I only got about 1000 char/sec talking to
Telebit's own machine, which was some sort of 386 PC.
Using 19200 instead of 9600 was critical; I typically got 500-800
cps at 9600.  From Ft. Collins CO to either LA or NJ I typically
got about 1000 cps; transmission was a lot noisier both on AT&T and
Sprint.

All these numbers were uncompressed, since compression wasn't
available at the time.  The comment that news transmitted faster
with modem compression turned off was interesting; it may be worth
experimenting with combinations of news compression off and modem
compression on, though that's unlikely to win.

Receiving machine speed is critical; it's highly unlikely that uunet
will run out of gas, since it's a large Sequent multiprocessor box.
Most of the transmission is from them to you.  I found my machine
went a lot faster when I put /usr/spool/uucp and /usr/spool/news in
the same file system, since it didn't have to copy data to hand it
to rnews.  Alternatively, make sure if they're in different
filesystems that they're on different physical disks so you don't
get spindle-thrash.
		Bill
-- 
# Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs 2G218 Holmdel NJ 201-949-0705 ho95c.att.com!wcs
	# also cloned at 201-271-4712 tarpon.att.com!wcs 

#			... counting stars by candle light ....