Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!abhg!carpet!bill From: bill@carpet.WLK.COM (Bill Kennedy) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Small sites (was Re: The death of USENET) LONG Message-ID: <100@carpet.WLK.COM> Date: 16 Jun 88 06:49:23 GMT References: <7475@swan.ulowell.edu> <2645@rpp386.UUCP> <329@bdt.UUCP> Reply-To: bill@ssbn.WLK.COM (Bill Kennedy) Followup-To: news.admin Distribution: na Organization: W.L. Kennedy Jr. and Associates Lines: 119 Before I get into David's article, I had composed an email reply. The farther I got into the reply the more I felt it _should_ be posted because there are a lot of sites like his and mine, little teapot leaves who would like to be producers as well as consumers. We can bring some things to the party, so I'm following up rather than replying. In article <329@bdt.UUCP> david@bdt.UUCP (David Beckemeyer) writes: > >Being the admin of a simple leaf of a leaf of a leaf site, I >usually don't participate in these conversations, but I couldn't >resist this time. I'm taking a lot of license deleting a lot of what he said in order to supplement his article, not ignore it. > It's clear that anything you say in this group >is going to get flamed, so I'm not even going to put in one of those >"please don't flame me..." lines. Isn't it a shame he's correct? Asbestos suit on and zipped, let's go. >There's been a lot of talk about freeloaders. And at this time, I feel >I'm a freeloader, but not by design. I run a little 286 UNIX box There are a bundle of us just like you. I am awed by a decwrl (I got to actually walk its halls one day) and clearly we can't offer the class or category of service as the big boys, but we're there. Maybe we even do deserve some of the heat we get from time to time because our sheer numbers have inflated at least the maps. >hops from a backbone. Our machine is taxed to just chew on the news >we get, but that doesn't mean I'm not willing to feed others or do >my part forwarding mail. But it doesn't work that way. Nobody wants >a partial feed, at 2400bps, from a tiny leaf site. And who wants to >route mail through that type of node either? Everybody wants a full >feed at 9600 bps directly from the nearest backbone site. That's not exactly my experience, proposal to follow, but what David says is essentially correct. It's easy to feel like a second class citizen when article after article suggests that the micros should carry a bell and a bowl. I won't propose the "revenge of the teapots" :-), but rather something useful or at least a challenge to the "big boys". I feed a couple of sites at 2400bps and with a subset of my partial feed. I feed one site at 1200bps and it's a 3B2! Let's accept David's point but turn it around. How does a 1200bps site get a feed at all any more? How does a teapot who only wants or can handle a partial feed get a feed? My site is blessed by having a long suffering upstream SA who _will_ put up with a teapot leaf. I propose that the hotter sites let the teapots handle the applications that they just can't fit in. A brief example. The San Antonio, TX "backbone" (not really, but he is to us) is petro. They handle news and mail for the entire area, about a fifty mile radius. The SA jumps through hoops to keep everyone happy and spends a lot of time, grief, and money to do it. They (petro) just can't handle any more "readers", it's a matter of cycles and modems. Enter the teapots. We can handle that, we have a few cycles to contribute and our "MR" light will burn out long before our "OH" light. I invite, even challenge, the net to figure out a way to fit us in and put us to work. It seems like an appropriate time. >What I'm trying to say (rather poorly I suppose), is that, is it >possbile for smaller sites (like mine) to relieve any of the burden >from the medium sized and larger sites? I can't claim I said it any better but I used a lot more words :-) >a crumby little 286 is not going to do much, but I'm willing to >do my best with what I have. I have a small company (read myself and >my wife part-time) but I don't want to be a freeloader becuase I >find USENET valuable and I don't want to contribute to its death >if I can help it. Me too, and I'd be shocked if the others just like us felt any differently. At this point the other teapots should flame away, I just volunteered _your_ machine, in _your_ house, to become part of the solution. >It seems like if the load can be better distributed, there are >resources out there to handle it. Precisely. I have, can, do, and will continue to help new folks/sites onto the net. No noble motives, I have more spare time than an SA who is tangling with the latest burst of six month old stuff from his neighbor. Further, where does some poor soul get access any more? Let's not scream "no more access, there's too much already", there isn't. The people who read news at ssbn (other than me) almost never post anything. The few times they do, it's almost always (excepting me) a good contribution. [ I replied to what he concludes with ... ] >more of their resources, within their budgets. I know there >are no controlling bodies, but what if we polled for information >from site admins regarding what resources they are willing to expend >(e.g. how many long distance feeds, or mail routing links). In my opinion David is referring to some TLC. The teapots can provide a service that the workhorses can't. We can acquire, service, and "grow" new netters. We can provide links to the hinterlands (ssbn is in Pipe Creek, Texas). We can pick up people that the others can't fiddle with and fiddle with them. We can teach netiquette (sp?). >freeloading without "official" control, but I still believe that >there are a lot of "unintentional" freeloaders like me out there >that may be able to help the problem. David's right. We're here, we're willing, we won't just dissolve, give us something to do, we'll do it (leave your bowls and bells at the door :-). Will someone propose comp.teapot? :-) :-) :-) Seriously, I think that the net should take a close look at the smaller, less featured sites and see if there isn't something that we can do to alleviate the overall (perceived) problem. There is another facet that should actually make us be an attractive resource. At a teapot site the SA is owner, manager, accountant, programmer, trouble shooter, and janitor. There are no layers or bureaucracy to deal with, the entire cast of characters is at the end of the wire. We can be more agile and more responsive than our larger neighbors. I don't want to hear any more groaning (other than for the length of this follow up) about the micros until you bigger folks exploit the resource that is already in place. Micros flame by email please :-) -- Bill Kennedy Internet: bill@ssbn.WLK.COM Usenet: { killer | att-cb | ihnp4!tness7 }!ssbn!bill