Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!wugate!uunet!bfmny0!tneff
From: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Disaster Planning
Keywords: doom naysayers death destruction
Message-ID: <14813@bfmny0.UU.NET>
Date: 27 Oct 89 19:54:50 GMT
References: <103@farcomp.UUCP> <35944@apple.Apple.COM> <14806@bfmny0.UU.NET> <27932@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff)
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In article <27932@amdcad.AMD.COM> cdr@amdcad.amd.com (Carl Rigney) writes:
>Innumeracy strikes again.

With rudeness swift on its heels it would seem... :-/

>1) At its peak the PacBell phone system in the Bay area was switching 
>1 million calls a minute.  "grep u.usa.ca.[024680] | wc -l" shows
>517 sites.  Even assuming every site spent every minute on the phone
>(far from true, since many of them are small), that's 0.05% load.

Several things wrong with this.  First, there are lots more sites out
there UUCP'ing than list themselves individually in the UUCP Map Project
lists.  Within subnets (which may well use the telephone system, not
just LANs) the minor sites are positively discouraged from listing.
Second, each UUCP connection may take one, two, several or dozens of
ATTEMPTED dials to succeed.  In times of emergency, the average
dials/success can only rise.  Each failed attempt is roughly as
significant in its impact on the phone system as a successful
connection.  Human voice customers with "redial" buttons on their new
style phones would be equally troublesome, but human patience is low
compared to that of uucico and uupoll and cron.  Finally, if I really
*must* point this out -- just because other people clogged the lines
irresponsibly after an emergency does not mean that we in the Net
community ought to feel scot-free to do the same.  On the contrary,
we ought to proud enough to set an example.

>2) A minute of conversation is about a page of dialogue; call it
>2 kilobytes.  A Trailblazer can send 2KB (compressed) in less than
>a second.  Nearly a 100 to 1 reduction in phone bandwidth, plus MORE
>IMPORTANTLY, as Chuq noted computers batch messages, and so many
>messages are sent with one connection, reducing the amount of
>phone switching required.

Yes yes, Trailblazers are wonderful and everyone should have one, but
not for the sake of being able to guarantee continuity for the Led
Zeppelin Mailing List in the middle of a nuclear power plant accident
zone.  They are good because with them you can get your emergency
information distributed over the net in a few seconds before yielding
the lines to comply with an official request -- or before you lose
service altogether.

>Next subject.

For the above quoted poster this is probably wise. :-)
-- 
Annex Canada now!  Free Quebec; raze and depopulate  |  Tom Neff
Ontario; license Inuit-run casinos on the BC shore.  |  tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET