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From: jeh@cmkrnl.uucp
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Is UUNET going to upgrade?
Message-ID: <1991Jun26.221821.134@cmkrnl.uucp>
Date: 27 Jun 91 05:18:21 GMT
References: <1991Jun8.210644.4897@shaman.com> <7360@mjbtn.JOBSOFT.COM> 
 <1991Jun10.144434.21216@m2xenix.psg.com> <1991Jun18.024342.1387@uunet.uu.net>
Organization: Kernel Mode Consulting, San Diego CA
Lines: 41

In article <1991Jun18.024342.1387@uunet.uu.net>, asp@uunet.uu.net 
(Andrew Partan) writes:
> The current bottleneck (its always changing) is the uucp machine,
> especially late at night when everyone is calling it.  Unfortunately, to
> upgrade that large monolithic machine to a larger monolithic machine is
> going to cost something like $150,000- plus.
> Instead what we are doing is working on rewritting uucp to make it run
> across multiple machines.  This is not an easy task.  [...]

gee, if you were running on VMS in a VAXcluster you could add nodes to your
heart's content, and the cluster software takes care of everything necessary
to allow all nodes to handle uucp calls.  

Oh, did you say that cost per mip is a concern?  Oh, well...  :-)

Now for a HELPFUL suggestion!  I am not a uunet subscriber, but last night I
needed to download many things from them via their 900 number.  During the
first long transfer I noticed the PEP light on my modem blinking.  This is
evidence of a PEP "retrain".  Naturally, the RD light indicated no data being
received during this period. 

This happened several times, so I killed the call and dug through some old
saved messages.  Someone had said that setting S120=16 might help in cases
where the modem seemed to be retraining frequently. 

I changed my telebit dial script to set S120=16 and let my uucico daemon call
uunet again.  This time there were no retrains, and I got about 1400
char/second, which is as good as the Trailblazer ever does, on the remaining
significant-size files.  

Both calls were in the 0300 to 0400 time frame, east coast time.  

Obviously this is a poor sample, consisting of only two calls.  I might have
just happened to hit lots of noise on the first call and very little on the
second.  My modem is a Telebit T2500, ROM version GF7.00.  Your mileage may 
vary.  

	--- Jamie Hanrahan, Kernel Mode Consulting, San Diego CA
uucp protocol guru, VMSnet [DECUS uucp] Working Group, DECUS VAX Systems SIG 
Internet:  jeh@dcs.simpact.com, hanrahan@eisner.decus.org, or jeh@crash.cts.com
Uucp:  ...{crash,scubed,decwrl}!simpact!cmkrnl!jeh