Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!midway!clout!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: BITFTP grief!
Message-ID: <1991May16.143532.22617@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 16 May 91 14:35:32 GMT
References: <1991May15.042146.29800@iguana.uucp> <81678@bu.edu> <1705@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca>
Distribution: na
Organization: Chinet - Chicago Public Access UNIX
Lines: 36

In article <1705@aupair.cs.athabascau.ca> lyndon@cs.athabascau.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg) writes:

>>You might talk to the folks who run the BITFTP gateway, and see if
>>they could slow down the rate at which they mail a large request.

Yes, it's a little awesome for us serial line folks to see the FTP
transcripts showing a 500K file received within the same second it
was requested, and dumped into mail in 5 or 6 seconds.

>What we should really do is pressure the BITFTP sites to only honour
>requests from machines that are in the BITNET RSCS node tables.

But what about uunet customers?

>There are enough machines out there providing anonymous UUCP access 
>to software archives that use of BITFTP from UUCP sites is no longer
>justifiable.

Enough???  Since when has software become a matter of quantity?  If you
can't get to the item you want, who cares how many others there are?
For example, how else can you get the in-progress work on kermit5a
other than ftp'ing from the kermit/sw directory on watsun.cc.columbia.edu?

>If you want the software, you can bloody well pay your own
>phone line charges to pick it up. Maybe you didn't want that software so 
>badly after all ...

Isn't paying your own way supposed to be what uunet is all about?

>[ BTW - most of our problems went away when we got onto the Internet.
>  I now run all my non-local UUCP connections over TCP. Keep pushing
>  for that ONET link :-) ]

At what volume does this become practical?

Les Mikesell