Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!ut-sally!husc6!necntc!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!cbatt!ukma!ukecc!vnend
From: vnend@ukecc.uky.edu (D. V. W. James)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,news.admin
Subject: Re: Scary Thought ...
Message-ID: <1225@ukecc.uky.edu>
Date: Mon, 9-Mar-87 13:41:22 EST
Article-I.D.: ukecc.1225
Posted: Mon Mar  9 13:41:22 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 10-Mar-87 23:15:55 EST
References: <919@smeagol.JPL.NASA.GOV> <863@maynard.BSW.COM> <477@gouldsd.UUCP>
Sender: news@ukecc.uky.edu
Reply-To: vnend@ukecc.UUCP (D. V. W. James)
Organization: Univ. of KY Engineering Computing Center
Lines: 54
Xref: mnetor comp.mail.uucp:323 news.admin:236

In article <477@gouldsd.UUCP> mjranum@gouldsd.UUCP (Marcus J Ranum) writes:
>        Another small point: running news on a PC with uulink is
>still a longish way away. Why ? Well, the news software actually
>pipes a whole bunch of commands through a series of pipes that
>would gag an IBM in no time at all. Mush-Dos implements pipes by
>making a tempfile on your disk and then execcing it's way along
>the pipe. Implementing a 4 step pipe (even on a hot motherboard
>like mine that is 3X IBM speed) takes quite a while. There's also
>the matter of diskspace, etc, etc, etc.

	But AT's and AT clones can run UNIX, some with high clock
speeds and coprocessors. And I've seen harddisks as large as 80Meg
for as little as $1200. And there are several PCs on fidonet running
more than enough disk space to carry news.

>        I don't think the problem is going to be tons of PCs, I
>think the problem is going to be exponentially increasing traffic.
>The PCs will weed themselves out. After all, it would take one all
>night to process the amount of news we get here, not to mention
>phone costs, and disk space needs that would tend to make it (for
>now) prohibitively expensive for the home hobbyist.
>--mjr();

	Phone costs, locally, are nil for the hobbyist willing
to settle for only one feed. UKMA has said (at least I think they
said...) that they would feed local sites. Currently they feed 2,
with one more coming up soon and talk of adding two more, some as
local calls, some as part of the campus network. Time could be a 
problem, but if you are willing to pay the cost for a dedicated 
news PC, then the cost of a 2400 baud modem and a dedicated phone
line is cheap.
	
	And to top things off, Apple just announced the Macintosh II,
running a 68020, 2meg RAM and an 80meg harddisk. It should do the job of
running Netnews just fine...

	Personally, I don't think that this is really the problem that
the original poster thinks that it will be. *I* would like to have 
my own site at home, but how many of us do? Laura Crieghton at hoptoad
already does, I'm sure that a few other sites are basically the same
thing. Rather than the sudden influx that might swamp the system, I
think we will just slowly continue to grow, with a growing proportion
of the new sites being pc's. They shouldn't generate lots of traffic
individually, though in mass they might start to cause problems. But
this would just be a problem that would occur sooner or later anyway.
The only alternative is limiting USENET's size to some arbitrary number,
and is anyone REALLY in favor of that? 


-- 
Later y'all,             Vnend            Ignorance is the Mother of Adventure.                        
cbosgd!ukma!ukecc!vnend; or vnend@engr.uky.edu; or vnend%ukecc.uucp@ukma.BITNET             
           Also: cn0001dj@ukcc.BITNET and Compuserve 73277,1513                   
                     "Then the fit hit the Shan."