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From: cball@ishmael.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.stargate
Subject: Re: Restrictions on Stargate
Message-ID: <129100001@ishmael>
Date: Fri, 20-Mar-87 12:29:00 EST
Article-I.D.: ishmael.129100001
Posted: Fri Mar 20 12:29:00 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 23-Mar-87 00:21:39 EST
References: <103@stargate.UUCP>
Lines: 48
Nf-ID: #R:stargate.UUCP:-10300:ishmael:129100001:000:2883
Nf-From: ishmael.UUCP!cball    Mar 20 12:29:00 1987



Dear Stargate Team:
	I am confused about several facets of this discussion and would
appreciate clarification.  My understanding of the situation suggests that
the available bandwidth has sufficent capacity to easily handle all of
netnews and that by doing so, even the experimental rates would lower costs
for the vast majority of sites on the net. 

	First of all, the stargate service operates at 2400 baud.  This
translates to a raw transmission capacity of roughly 20 Mbytes/day.  I
believe that our site is receiving about 3 Mbytes/day of netnews.  Even
allowing for transmission overhead and duplicate transmissions and it would
seem that you have sufficient bandwith for all of news.  What is the
rational for restricting it?
	Second, your experimental rates are $150/month.  This is less than
our typical telephone bill.  Our site receives news from one site and feeds
it to another.  Calls to either site are local (1 message unit) calls and
cost $.0926 for each 5 minutes.  The same $150 stargate charges buys us
1620 message units/month which translates to an average of 4.4 hours/day.
This is clearly less than the 24 hour/day transmission capability which
you offer.  Furthermore, 4.4 hours gives us a cost equivalent raw
transmission bandwidth of 3.7 Mbytes at 2400 baud or 1.8 Mbytes at 1200 baud.
Rates vary, but it seems that the only sites which would save money by not
using stargate are those using pre-existing leased lines.
	Third, the current direction of stargate, to limit the topics
transmitted to moderated groups and "worthwhile" others, is the source of
many problems being hashed and re-hashed.  Restricting the data makes the
data transmitted relatively more precious(in dollars/Mbyte) and creates the
incentive to redistribute it via dialup lines.  To the extent that this policy
is followed, it appears (to me) that stargate is throwing out its primary asset.

	To the extent that my understanding is correct, it seems that
by including all of netnews, you would create a purely economic incentive
for sites to subscribe.  The utilization of as much filler(netnews if you
will) as is available simply increases the incentive to subscribe,
particularly since folks like and want it.  Since it would be more expensive
to exchange news via any dialup line, it would not be necessary to attempt to
limit transmission from subscribers to other sites.  In fact, dialup
transmissions between uucp neighbors could be the approved way to get back
data.  This would eliminate the need for duplicate transmissions and
increasing the effective bandwidth.  It seems to me that the time to start
filtering is when the service matures and bandwith limitations are reached.
This policy would help you establish a large, appreciative, customer base
which would support the additional value added services you have stated
an interest in developing.

			Charles Ball