Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 (Fortune) 6/7/84; site dmsd.UUCP
Path: utzoo!dciem!nrcaero!pesnta!amdcad!fortune!hpda!dmsd!bass
From: bass@dmsd.UUCP (John Bass)
Newsgroups: net.news.stargate
Subject: Re: Stargate Deployment: possibilities
Message-ID: <159@dmsd.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 30-Jan-85 06:19:48 EST
Article-I.D.: dmsd.159
Posted: Wed Jan 30 06:19:48 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 1-Feb-85 21:03:36 EST
References: <233@cmu-cs-k.ARPA> <1236@eagle.UUCP>
Lines: 117

Tim Maroney brings to light a very necessary point of view ... by what
do we judge the "experiment" and what is really necessary to determine
success/failure/neither outcomes. His forsight in looking for alternatives
and caution is right on.

Mr Shannon is in error to mention Tims name then completely ignore Tims
arguments simply as a forumn to complain about negative or alternate points
of view and to further surpress meaningful discussion. I am disappointed
in the average maturity of the net that has jumped on the pro-stargate
project in a magic frenzy and loudly condemned the non-believers with
non-facts and tirates.

I think that the Stargate is a very interesting techinical challenge, and
a wonderful chance for Lauren and others to work with some hightech toys.
I give my full support to Lauren to further this project quickly to its
logical end.

As with Tim and several others who questions and suggestions have been drowned
out in the mindless criticism of a few religous zelouts ... I TOO HAVE
SOME SERIOUS QUESTIONS THAT HAVE NOT BEEN ADDRESSED! So don't flame stargate
religion back at me or the net .... discuss the issues ... how to we
make the most of stargate.

1) It seems that one strong argument for stargate is that it will reduce
traffic on the land based network since EVERYONE will start using the
stargate hop and it's possibly moderated forum.

	A) judging by the current traffic in the arpa digests and the
	mod news groups two questions are raised ... one is that the
	information content in digests like fa-dcom (or whatever the
	correct spelling is) is not significantly greater or better
	.... it looks just like normal nets without some of the flaming
	OR the involvement levels of readers .... this is both good
	and bad.

	B) Secondly the net mod groups do not seem to be successful
	while the orignal forums are very active ... there seems to
	be a STRONG interest in non-moderated forums.

	C) It seems that from these two observations that possibly the
	stargate project could be placed into service with some level of
	support and still have the land/phone based network grow with
	increased use and importance ... thus some sites would have
	not only the land based costs BUT ALSO the stargate subscription
	costs.

	D) from A, B and C a serious question arises ... do we

		1) breakup the land based network to force stargate to
		succeed??

		2) if the infomation content of the land based network
		stays at a high enough level will there be support for
		sites to pay BOTH the phone charges and STARGATE FEES?

		3) if the land network is broken up by backbone sites
		switching to STARGATE only ... how will stargate postings
		be carried from the average remote site to the uplink.

		4) if the land based network is broken up and stargate
		service is discontinued what will be the strategy for
		recovery or backtracking to an other service?

2) Stargate is clearly an experiment at this point, with the possible
formation of a commercial, for profit, information service at the end
of the experiment. Little discussion (or clarification) has addressed
the topic of what is the experiment to prove or disprove, on what the
project considers a successful outcome, or on separating out the
"experiments goals" from the "commercial end product goals". This may
have been discussed but the religous zelots blur the two items into
one. It seems some -- including myself -- wonder if the frenzy has
produced only ONE ACCEPTABLE GOAL of placing stargate into commercial
operation as it's measure of success. Frank's concerns I believe had
merit and should have been discussed ... but his inmature solutions
seem to have temporily closed the doors on reasonable discussion ...
lets start over and get these and other questions answered NOW!


3) Lastly I wonder if a comercial stargate is of practical value outside
an extremely interesting technical exersize and a chance to say "we
really did it".

	For a moment lets consider a simular approach but not quite as
magic as using a "stargate". A much cheaper solution with GLOBAL use
to help europe and places south and east would be to use a HAM shortwave
RTTY link. A collection of 8-24 stations could use a one hour timeslot to
broadcast a NEW traffic to their sight in the last 24hour period, with
several timeslots reserved for retransmission of new data 1, 3, and 7 days
back to help sites who have been down. These "backbone sites" would
transmit new articles comming in via ground and retransmit new articles
in the air .... thus giving an 8times redundancy in a 24hr slot and
providing for a 1 week recapture window.

	While the number of transmitting stations would be limited to
a dozen or so ... 5-6 in the US would cut down on much of the long distance
traffic with strategic placement ... at the cost of transistor SW radios
(used for 2-3 bucks) and cost of an RTTY or 300 baud modem (under $50 bucks)
nearly EVERY SITE could afford a downlink. With a distribution of the remaining
transmitting links in europe and other foreign sites the whole net could
go WORLD WIDE VERY QUICK>

	To improve costs in smaller geographic or more remote areas other
frequency assignments could be made to create subnets with one of the
backbone transmitting sites also monitoring those frequencies as well ..
a local gateway if you wish.

	For some sites with packet radio gear the meduim could be used
for a subnet as well.


Now who is ham that could help setup this alternate experiment??

NO FLAMES PLEASE .... just founded facts and arguments OR better
proposals to make stargate, hamgate, or someother alternate help
USENET grow ....

John Bass