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From: sewilco@mecc.UUCP (Scot E. Wilcoxon)
Newsgroups: net.news.b
Subject: Sorting batches helpful?
Message-ID: <510@mecc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 17-Jun-86 16:49:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: mecc.510
Posted: Tue Jun 17 16:49:35 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Jun-86 07:33:17 EDT
Reply-To: sewilco@mecc.UUCP (Scot E. Wilcoxon)
Distribution: na
Organization: MN Ed Comp Corp, St Paul, MN
Lines: 28
Keywords: sort news batch

It has occurred to me that disk I/O on news articles may be a little
more efficient if articles tend to be stored sequentially on disk.
I think there's a simple way of encouraging it as well...

	When batching news, have sendbatch sort the batch file.

The articles will get sorted alphabetically (the pathnames are sorted).
When the batch is received, all articles in each newsgroup will be together.
Depending upon the disk allocation scheme, they will tend to go sequentially
in clusters on the disk.  So when the articles are read, retransmitted, or
expired, the activity will tend to be somewhat more sequential than it is now.

Right now, articles get passed on in the order in which they are received.
I'm sure few people read news that way.  Much news is handled in
newsgroup alphabetical and article sequential order, which is what the
sort will do.

Note that your system doesn't get the benefits of the sort, but rather
the systems which receive your batch (although they'll pass the benefits).
Of course, if you do it you should ask them to do it also.

Other than the system-dependent disk allocation, are there any
problems with this idea?
-- 

Scot E. Wilcoxon  Minn. Ed. Comp. Corp.             quest!mecc!sewilco
45 03 N / 93 08 W   (612)481-3507         {ihnp4,philabs}!mecc!sewilco
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