Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!houxm!mtuxo!mtune!akguc!codas!peora!ucf-cs!ki4pv!tanner From: tanner@ki4pv.UUCP (Tanner Andrews) Newsgroups: net.news Subject: Re: Data compression to lower phone bills (*possibly too long*) Message-ID: <6912@ki4pv.UUCP> Date: Fri, 6-Jun-86 12:48:48 EDT Article-I.D.: ki4pv.6912 Posted: Fri Jun 6 12:48:48 1986 Date-Received: Mon, 9-Jun-86 06:41:51 EDT References: <327@spdcc.UUCP> <8200002@nucsrl> <2369@phri.UUCP> <9875@ucsfcgl.ucsfcgl.UUCP>, <2203@cbosgd.UUCP> Organization: CompuData South, DeLand Lines: 23 Keywords: money, power News is distributed via a "diffusion" scheme, where articles are passed along paths which are often redundant. When the n'th copy of an article (for n != 1) arrives at a site, it is tossed out. The first copy is the only copy kept or passed along. If we merely pass along the news without uncompressing and unbatching it, we lose the ability to toss duplicates from our site. We also lose the ability to _not_ pay phone bills to re-transmit the duplicate. If you are not batching your news before transmission, your phone bills are much higher than they should be. You are losing a fair amount of the value of compression if you compress 100 short articles seperately rather than the same articles in a batch -- even if you have an iAEC-286 processor which is limited to 12-bit compression. There is also a certain amount of overhead PER FILE transmitted; for for short files the UUCP negotiation may take as long as the actual file transmission. If you batch and transmit 100 articles, there are two files transmitted (the batch + the UUX file). Transmit each article seperately, and you have to negotiate 200 times for 200 files. -- Tanner Andrews