Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!karl_kleinpaste From: karl_kleinpaste@cis.ohio-state.edu Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc Subject: Re: CompuServe backlog; mail servers (LONG) Message-ID: Date: 21 Dec 90 16:19:59 GMT References: <1990Dec19.150853.10463@sceard.Sceard.COM> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Organization: Ohio State Computer Science Lines: 43 mrm@sceard.Sceard.COM writes: >"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a > station wagon loaded with magtapes." > --Unknown, but possibly Bob Sutterfield (Bob?) I heard this as "the fastest way to deliver data across the country is to fill a truck with magtapes and drive it" in the early 1970s. Is it worth calculating to see if this might be the case? I think it was Tom Reidel that said it. I don't know if it's the original citation, but Craig Ward informs me in private mail that there's a slightly different wording of this maxim in Tanenbaum's _Computer Networks_, 2nd Ed., p. 57. I checked, and it's there. Thanx to Craig for the ref. [Reducing traffic] contains the the "kiss off MBASes, ..." I don't really want to do that, and we didn't (except by accident, when uux locking broke down under the load, and mail crashed and burned [smail diagnostic: "uux failed: -1"]:-). As much as I dislike MBASes, they have their place. The problem is that most (in fact, all but a very very few) MBASes are insensitive to resource abuse. Kantor's solution is elegant and resource-(ab)use- sensitive. [Raising link speed] is probably the simplest solution. It may cost money, We're working on that, in several directions. Just this instant, there's little to be done directly. Ask any corporate entity to do something that will cost money, and watch inertia take over. It'll happen, but it'll take time. [Making more paths] is the artery bypass solution. Already implemented. We're running two lines to keep ahead of the (still much higher than usual) flow. Now back to bickering about header rewriting :-) Oh, fun. :-) --karl