Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!mips!daver!dlr From: dlr@daver.bungi.com (Dave Rand) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Is UUNET going to upgrade? Message-ID: <1991Jun21.204536.23257@daver.bungi.com> Date: 21 Jun 91 20:45:36 GMT References: <1084@camco.Celestial.COM> <28609F47.1E0D@tct.com> Organization: Association for the Prevention of Polar Bears and Kangaroos Lines: 97 In article emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) writes: >Chip, could you give a tutorial on compressed batched SMTP ? That >would seem to be the ideal thing for long-haul links with high modem >costs. How to set it up within smail, what the gotchas are, how much >of a savings in on-line time there is and at what cost in extra >compression vs. benefit in fewer uuxes done. > >Numbers would be nice to know, if they're convincing we'll start to >offer the service on our dialups. > I will leap in here as well. I run CBSMTP to many sites now, including decwrl.dec.com. This offers several advantages: o Some sites have expensive/restricted calling times. I can defer batching mail to them until this time, and collect 20-50 messages in one batch. Compressing on this volume of mail is a huge win, with compression ratios of 3:1 or more. The best savings, however, is the 10 second or so UUCP turnaround per file - most CBSMTP links are now sitting at 1-2 minute connects (details below). o Proper "smtp"-like addressing. This prevents having to whip back and forth between "!" and "@" addressing on sites that understand both forms. o Unlimited multi-drop recipients. I run a large mailing list from bungi.com, and I get the advantage of having a (quite) large list of recipients of one mail message. Yes, you can do this with rmail as well (on those sites that support this), but it still has the command line limit of 1024 characters (or 10K characters, depending on your UNIX flavour). Now, on to numbers. Site cheers.bungi.com is only a hundred or so miles from daver.bungi.com, so of course it is a hyper-expensive call (within California). I connect to it only in the wee hours (0100-0600), and queue mail the rest of the day. Over the past few days, here is the connect information: uucp cheers (6/17-1:27:38,11787,2) OK (conversation complete ttyh2 57) uucp cheers (6/18-1:27:17,27604,2) OK (conversation complete ttyh4 65) uucp cheers (6/18-6:08:37,307,2) OK (conversation complete ttyh3 145) uucp cheers (6/19-1:07:17,9530,4) OK (conversation complete ttyh2 66) uucp cheers (6/20-1:07:05,26502,2) OK (conversation complete ttyh2 54) uucp cheers (6/21-1:07:12,14722,4) OK (conversation complete ttyh2 61) uucp cheers (6/21-3:57:12,16022,2) OK (conversation complete ttyh2 47) System # Files Bytes Rx Bytes Tx Connect Rx Avg Rx Max Tx Avg Tx Max TTY cheers 14 0 47762 0:00:28 0 0 1668 1740 ttyh2 cheers 2 0 2961 0:00:01 0 0 1701 1701 ttyh3 cheers 2 0 22382 0:00:15 0 0 1453 1452 ttyh4 System # Files Bytes Rx Bytes Tx Connect Rx Avg Tx Avg cheers 18 0 73105 0:00:45 0 1597 Site Name Peak Evening Night Total cheers 0.0 / $0.00 0.0 / $0.00 0.2 / $1.23 0.2 / $1.23 TOTAL 0 / $0.00 0 / $0.00 0 / $1.23 0 / $1.23 So far, they have received 264 messages, but I have sent them only 18 files (9 D. and 9 X. files), totalling 73,105 bytes (compressed), at an average transfer speed of 1597 bytes/sec, using 45 real seconds of transfering data. Note that the login overhead/uucp overhead means that we paid for 9 minutes of connect time, but only used 45 seconds of actual TX/RX. Sigh. Facts of life. I suspect that CBSMTP has saved me (this week) over $4. Each uucp transaction would have taken at least 10 seconds, or about 44 minutes of connect time. Ignoring the effect of the first minute/subsequent minute charges (which are considerable - 0.21/0.15 prime, 0.17/0.12 evening, 0.12/0.09 night), this is 8.25 minutes vs 44. $16/month - $192/year. For the cost of a _very_ small amount of CPU time here to do the compress, and there to do the uncompress. This is a small example - most of the sites that I talk to do much more mail traffic than cheers.bungi.com. CBSMTP is a BIG win. I wish everyone would use it - sun.com for example gets a lot of traffic from daver.bungi.com via uucp. 1230 files so far, meaning 615 messages so far this week. I bet the connect time could be at least halved... 9 hours so far this week! System # Files Bytes Rx Bytes Tx Connect Rx Avg Rx Max Tx Avg Tx Max TTY sun 51 55634 13405 0:01:36 626 1094 1773 1900 ttyh1 sun 318 36778 4758207 0:54:49 500 958 1479 1884 ttyh2 sun 80 69188 40373 0:02:52 463 1139 1706 1821 ttyh3 sun 698 1272223 3750093 1:44:37 773 1149 809 1898 ttyh4 sun 83 29018 39527 0:04:57 176 213 296 273 ttyh6 System # Files Bytes Rx Bytes Tx Connect Rx Avg Tx Avg sun 1230 1462841 8601605 2:48:54 689 1073 Site Name Peak Evening Night Total sun 4.0 / $14.88 2.0 / $5.84 3.3 / $5.64 9.4 / $26.36 TOTAL 4 / $14.88 2 / $5.84 3 / $5.64 9 / $26.36 -- Dave Rand {pyramid|mips|bct|vsi1}!daver!dlr Internet: dlr@daver.bungi.com