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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!pesnta!twg!greipa!paul
From: paul@greipa.UUCP (Paul A. Vixie)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: a harmless query...
Message-ID: <185@greipa.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 3-May-85 04:44:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: greipa.185
Posted: Fri May  3 04:44:46 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 5-May-85 03:42:50 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Genstar Rental Electronics, Palo Alto, Ca.
Lines: 31

Well, then.  I've just read 131 articles from net.news and I feel fairly
sure that noone has said anything about this in the past few weeks... (I
apologize in advance, of course, if this is not the case [of course]).

My understanding of news is that every system sends every article it
receives to every machine it feeds.  Lots of "every"'s in that...

If this understanding is correct, a system can get the same article from
every machine that feeds it.  This is not a major problem, since it will
go straight to the bit-bucket when its article-ID is found to match that
of an existing article.  However, the article must actually be sent to
a machine before it can get ignored.

I'm not sure what the statistics would be on this, but as an example,
wouldn't it be silly if 45 minutes of each 90 minute nightly long-distance
UUCP connection was spent transferring articles which are trashed
immediately?

Folks are starting to talk about 2400-baud dialup modems for the backbone
sites.  If my above-stated worries are founded, I think there is a less-
expensive way to cut down on phone charges...

The technical problems in not sending articles already present in the
receiving system are beyond the scope of this simple inquiry, not to
mention my limited understanding of UUCP.  If this is a well-known
subject and this entire article is useless drivel to you, please inform
me personally - I'll apologize to the net.  If not, please, let's have
a rousing technical chorus on it before 2.10.3 is released.

	Paul Vixie
	{twg decwrl}!greipa!paul