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Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.news.stargate
Subject: Re: Stargate Deployment: possibilities
Message-ID: <5092@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 22-Feb-85 17:39:55 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.5092
Posted: Fri Feb 22 17:39:55 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 22-Feb-85 17:39:55 EST
References: <560@vortex.UUCP>, <250@cmu-cs-k.ARPA>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 30

> The satellite netnews project ...
> ... poses a small but real danger to the existing network.
> Rather than flaming back and forth about whether the satellite netnews
> project will or won't destroy the net, or posting proofs that the danger is
> small (we all know that, but "small" ain't "none"), we should be considering
> how we would recognize that this was happening and what we could do about it
> once it was recognized.

Whether Stargate/whatever will destroy the existing network is irrelevant;
the existing network will destroy itself quite soon.  The traffic volume
is growing steadily, and with it the phone bills.  Batching, compression,
and faster modems will postpone the problem but cannot solve it.  Sooner
or later, the phone bills for the backbone sites will become unsupportable
and the whole thing will go down in flames.  Speaking as the sys admin of
a backbone site, I expect the crash within a couple of years.  Note that
this will happen *regardless* of whether an alternate method of news
transmission becomes practical, unless said alternate approach reduces
the volume of phone news to nearly zero.  I think this most unlikely,
and have the same opinion about the possibility of radical change to
bring traffic volume under firm control.  Usenet is doomed.

Given that the existing network *will* collapse, the question of whether
an alternate form of transmission will hasten its collapse is largely a
non-issue.  The collapse is coming.  If we want to have an alternative
in place, we must act now.  If doing so precipitates the crash, it's
still the right thing to do.  We must solve the problem, not just post-
pone it slightly.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry