Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!unisoft!gethen!farren
From: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Kermit 2.30 part 4 / 4 (To ARC or not to ARC)
Message-ID: <632@gethen.UUCP>
Date: 28 Jan 88 20:49:31 GMT
References: <5004@bellcore.bellcore.com> <3243@psuvax1.psu.edu> <1339@looking.UUCP> <19235@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Reply-To: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Organization: There's Unix there in Oakland
Lines: 23

In article <19235@bu-cs.BU.EDU> madd@bu-it.bu.edu (Jim Frost) writes:
>
>In conclusion, ARCed files do save space and therefore time and money,
>even on systems that use compression in their mailers.

I hate to see this going around again - while I posted facts and figures
some time ago, it would seem that people either didn't pay attention or
never heard:  ARCing files, if AND ONLY IF they are exclusively binary
files with minimal plaintext content, does not have a significant impact
one way or the other on net transmission costs.  If anything, the ARCed
files save a few percent.

If, however, the ARCs contain text files, the efficiency loss is
just plain enormous (on the order of 75 - 100 percent larger transmitted
files).  Do NOT post ARCs which are made up of text files.  Ever.
The standard news compression does a MUCH better job on text than
ARC/uuencode can ever hope to.  Really.

-- 
Michael J. Farren             | "INVESTIGATE your point of view, don't just 
{ucbvax, uunet, hoptoad}!     | dogmatize it!  Reflect on it and re-evaluate
        unisoft!gethen!farren | it.  You may want to change your mind someday."
gethen!farren@lll-winken.llnl.gov ----- Tom Reingold, from alt.flame