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From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Cost of news
Message-ID: <926@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 10-May-86 01:19:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: vortex.926
Posted: Sat May 10 01:19:59 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 14-May-86 06:32:33 EDT
References: <510@ucsfcca.UUCP>
Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles
Lines: 37

Even if transmission, reception, storage and processing of news and similar
materials were totally free (in a monetary sense) to all, the problems of
quality and volume would still remain.  Given the rate that new sites are 
joining the net, virtually any point-to-point communications medium could be 
saturated in pretty short order, even without the additional complication
of other users also competing for bandwidth.  Cost is but one factor
in the overall picture.

Point-to-point systems just don't scale up well--the sorts of communications
required for netnews-type operations are much more suited to broadcast
type technologies--which includes the satellite part of Stargate, of course.
A satellite transponder can broadcast simultaneously to any number of 
receiving points, and reaches all active sites at the same time without
the (sometimes very long) lags associated with point-to-point type 
communications.

There is also the increasingly obvious point that fewer and fewer people 
have the time nor the inclination to wade through all the muck on many 
newsgroups at any price.  The problems of moderation in the
current net environment are due to a number of factors, only one of which
is the time lags associated with the current network.
The Stargate service will be addressing all of these factors and should 
be able to avoid these problems.

I might mention at this point that the operational proposal for
Stargate addresses both a variety of "netnews"-type services and 
mail services, using direct satellite reception, cable television
reception, phone lines, and other transmission mediums, with an
emphasis on the "broadcast"-oriented technologies where appropriate.

The proposal will be presented to the Usenix board shortly, and I'll be 
speaking about the proposal and the overall status of Stargate at the
Atlanta Usenix Conference next month.  I hope that the community will 
find the project worthy of its support.

--Lauren--