Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsd!rutgers!bellcore!texbell!ssbn!looking!brad From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: Usenet Top-Level Domain Census Message-ID: <3167@looking.UUCP> Date: 30 Apr 89 05:46:58 GMT References: <164@ncis.tis.llnl.gov> <1660@vicom.COM> <89Apr29.175638edt.39756@neat.ai.toronto.edu> Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd. Lines: 24 And while we're on the subject, I would like to put in a plea to people to keep those message-ids short, if possible. In the old days, it was where the sequence was usually no more than 5 digits. Nowadays I see things like: Not to complain about bio.net in particular -- a fair number of sites are doing this sort of things. You may feel that if your site uses such IDs, it's not a problem, but when lots of people do it, it adds up. Not only does a typical net message contain a Reference line with several IDS, but each site likes to keep a database with these IDs as keys that goes back far longer than news is kept. In the case of the References line, that may only 60 extra bytes per message, but at 2500 messages/day, that's 150K extra per day, or about $1500 in transmission cost daily. Not because of just you, but everybody. So, if you are writing message-id code that doesn't use a sequence, try to keep it small. Encode things like dates & process-ids using the 92 safe printable characters, for example (no > or @) -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473