Xref: utzoo news.groups:12459 news.misc:3642
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bloom-beacon!ora!ambar
From: ambar@ora.ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz)
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.misc
Subject: Re: Report Card on the success of the group creation guidelines
Summary: IMHO, arbitron is biased to small systems
Message-ID: <155@ora.ora.com>
Date: 22 Sep 89 17:08:23 GMT
References: <17735@looking.on.ca> <1989Sep20.060201.4473@rpi.edu> <45814@bbn.COM> <4402@ncar.ucar.edu> <18401@looking.on.ca>
Reply-To: ambar@ora.ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz)
Followup-To: news.misc
Organization: O'Reilly and Associates, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 48

In article <18401@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes:

>In fact, isn't the whole point of NNTP to allow newsreading on small machines?
>So not having them included in the arbitron stats would only increase the
>readers/machine figure.

No, the "point" of NNTP (insamuch as NNTP relates to newsreading --
that T stands for Transmission, ya know) is to get rid of small
machines at large installations.

Before all the admins of one- or two-person machines get out their
flamethrowers, let me explain what I mean, using MIT as an example.

Before NNTP, MIT had hundreds of Unix boxes (little and not-so-little)
hanging around campus.  If someone on one of those boxes wanted to
read Usenet, they had to a) install it themselves, on their own
machine, b) beg their system administrator to install it, or c) beg
for a guest account on one of the machines who did.

Enter NNTP.  Now, MIT still has hundreds of Unix boxes, but no
one on campus has to install all of netnews on
their system in order to read news.  If they send mail to
usenet@bloom-beacon.mit.edu, we will tell them where to pick up the rn
sources.  If they are in the .media, .ai, or .lcs subdomains, there is
already a "main news machine" in their laboratory for them to use.
Otherwise, they read news off of bloom-beacon.  Everyone is happy;
there are fewer news machines at MIT; and bloom-beacon has an
average load of 8 :-)

However, since the news administrators only control the news machine,
and not the client machines where .newsrc files live, we can't run
arbitron.  It's also very difficult (but not impossible) to run
arbitron over a multi-machine news system even when the same person
administrates both news and the systems as a whole.  I had this
problem at Oracle -- there weren't enough hours in my day to hack
arbitron to run on thirty different machines and consolidate things
into one report.

What I'm arguing is that, in any news system that has more than one machine
(even one as small as ORA, which has three machines on one ethernet),
NNTP will probably be in use.   In any system where NNTP is in use,
running arbitron is very difficult.  Therefore, arbitron's numbers are
biased towards one-machine news systems.

(Followups are set to news.misc.)

				AMBAR
ambar@ora.com						uunet!ora!ambar