Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!sdd.hp.com!wuarchive!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!grr
From: grr@cbmvax.commodore.com (George Robbins)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
Subject: Re: USRobotics Courier HST/ix?
Message-ID: <15332@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 22 Oct 90 23:20:58 GMT
References: <1990Oct16.172741.13979@cbnews.att.com> <1990Oct18.181733.18413@nstar.uucp> <15268@cbmvax.commodore.com> <25@tdw205.ed.ray.com>
Reply-To: grr@cbmvax.commodore.com (George Robbins)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 36

In article <25@tdw205.ed.ray.com> heiser@world.std.com writes:
> In article <15268@cbmvax.commodore.com> grr@cbmvax.commodore.com (George Robbins) writes:
> >
> >If the uucp traffic is compressed new batches, the trailblazers can average
> >around 12K-BPS (with good connections and fast CPU's) while your V.32 modem
> >will somewhere less than 9600 and the compression will be ineffective.
> >
> 
> I find that my inbound news averages (as shown by 'uutraf') a bit better than
> 1200cps.  Outbound stuff, which is usually mail messages, news articles, etc,
> are around 1650-1670 cps.  Do I have a configuration problem here, or is this
> typical?

This sounds typical, the difference being due to incorrect measurement of the
time required to send outgoing batches.  The Telebit spoofing code tricks uucp
into thinking the transmission is complete when it still has a complete buffer
of data to send.  It "catches" up during the next file protcol exchange.

If you increase your news batch sizes to something reasonable like 128K you'll
see this level out a lot.  It is intereting to note that big news batches of
128K to 512K work quite reliably with the Trailblazer and drastically cut the
uucp fuss and bother with dozens of little batches being spooled for each site.

> I'm also seeing "alarm x" messages when I try to do other stuff on the system
> while it's receiving news packets on the Telebit -- Do I need to install
> a 16550 on the serial port to reduce system load?

Sounds like a good bet - the alarm messages are often indicative of dropped
characters, it's a timout before attempting to restart the conversation after
things get confused.  If the "alarm n" keeps increasing though, it probably
means a lousey/dropped connection or other problems.

-- 
George Robbins - now working for,     uucp:   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing:   domain: grr@cbmvax.commodore.com
Commodore, Engineering Department     phone:  215-431-9349 (only by moonlite)