Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Why aren't new articles compressed?
Message-ID: <40160@looking.on.ca>
Date: 29 Oct 89 17:56:23 GMT
References: <431@cpsolv.UUCP> <1989Oct27.161920.5169@utzoo.uucp> <432@cpsolv.UUCP>
Reply-To: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 16
Class: discussion

While compression could be good, it might not be as good as you think.

First of all, the average usenet article is 2K.  On a site with 2K blocks,
compression might do nothing for many of the files.  Of course, on a more
typical 1K block site, it could do very well.

But the biggest gain would come from big files.  For source postings, that
would be great.  For binaries (about 12% of the volume of the net) it might
not do as well, as many are already compressed, although expanded out a bit
with uuencoding.

More would be gained by keeping the articles in indexable archives of some
sort, possibly compressed as well.   Depending on block size, 20-30% of the
disk space in your spool is wasted due to block granularity.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473