Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!samsung!usc!apple!fair From: fair@Apple.COM (Erik E. Fair) Newsgroups: comp.org.usenix Subject: Re: USENIX Board Studies UUCP Message-ID: <36700@apple.Apple.COM> Date: 21 Nov 89 20:09:52 GMT References: <287@usenix.UUCP> <1989Nov19.032449.7940@world.std.com> <2167@prune.bbn.com> <7067@ficc.uu.net> Organization: USENET Protocol Police, Western Gateway Division Lines: 33 So long as telephone calls cost by the minute, NNTP and SMTP in their existing form are not appropriate - they have way too much dead time waiting for the remote to process the last command you sent them (and no, NNTP does no compression - a conscious design decision, because we weren't interested in reimplementing FTP to get the bits across unscathed). These protocols were designed for networks with dedicated or no cost links, where CPU time was the thing to be conserved, not communication time. UUCP in its present form is is perfect for telephone based interactions; prepare files, place the call, blast the files over the phone as fast as you can, hang up, and process what you got in from the remote. You spend minimum time actually on the phone (and therefore, you minimize your communication costs). Dialup IP is for people with unlimited local service, or money to burn. Netnews batching is about as optimal as you can get right now. The only way to make it cheaper is to try and figure out what the other guy has (i.e. what you don't need to send him) before you call him. Netnews already does this to the extent that it has the information (it never sends to a site already in the Path: header), but beyond that we need information we can't get without making the phone call we're trying to avoid in the first place. NNTP cheats, because it can ask before it sends and it's not a killer to wait for the answer. UUCP Email, on the other hand, needs work - moving all those little files is costly. BSMTP from BITNET land is one obvious alternative, particularly since you should be able to compress the batched SMTP transactions, and it will eliminate a whole raft of problems related to passing Email addresses through the shell on the way to the rmail command. Erik E. Fair apple!fair fair@apple.com