Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!kuhub.cc.ukans.edu!sloane From: sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news Subject: Re: Anu-News v5.9 availability Message-ID: <14833.253b0156@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> Date: 17 Oct 89 15:39:18 GMT References: Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services Lines: 39 In article , Eckart Meyer writes: > Why couldn't ANU News simply be available through one of the > BITNET Servers??????? One problem with this is the size of the ANU News distribution. Just the source files for Version 5.9 are about 2000 blocks, or about a megabyte. Since the maximum size file allow for transfer via BITNET is 300K, the posting would have to be split into parts. In fact, many mailers refuse to send things larger than 50K or 100K. If you split the V5.9 source up into enough parts that you can be reasonably sure that it will make it past all these mailers, you end up with 24 parts, just for the source. The documentation would take about the same number. I intend to put up a mail server here at KU sometime in the near future, and I will probably make ANU News available, but I don't think I will get many takers. Most of the people I talk to would rather send me a tape than deal with the multiple part mail messages. Another problem with the mailserver concept is related to how the uucp network is implemented. It is basically a "store and forward" mailing system that uses public telephone lines for its transmission medium. Now the phone company is unreasonable, and generaly wants money for using its lines. Sending ANU News V5.9 sources to a uucp site would mean that several sites along the way would have to pay for about a megabyte of phone time as they passed the message along. At least when I send something by hand I can route it to save as much money as possible. I doubt that an automatic mailer could do as well. You seem to be assuming that putting News on a server would mean that no one would have to do anything to get it distributed. Unfortunatly, that is not the case. Kuhub is a fairly well connected machine, being on both the internet and BITNET, but about 10% of my mail bounces for one reason or another. This means that the maintainer of the mail server would have to watch for bounce messages for the server and process them by hand. Given the relatively few requests for distributing ANU News via mail, it seems easier to do as I have been doing and just sending it out when someone requests it. -- USmail: Bob Sloane, University of Kansas Computer Center, Lawrence, KS, 66045 E-mail: sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu, sloane@ukanvax.bitnet, AT&T: (913)864-0444 "The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage." -- Mark Russell