Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!maytag!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: ont.uucp
Subject: Re: Is it time for a "uunet-north"?
Message-ID: <91074@looking.on.ca>
Date: 7 Feb 90 01:34:19 GMT
References: <90Feb5.222929est.827@church.csri.toronto.edu> <1990Feb6.171326.15603@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 23
Class: discussion

Henry is right.  A Xenix/286 machine can do a decent news feed for a few
sites, if it has nothing else to do, even with B news.  With C it is
probably even more capable. 

But since you can now buy a 386/20 mhz machine for under $1K in the USA
(ok, with no disk, so 2K gets you a disk and ethernet card) -- and this machine
could probably feed 20 sites if it had nothing else to do -- it's no big deal.

For local feeds you can be quite a bit more efficient.  If a Toronto site
were to insist on calling all its customers (local call) instead of being
called by them, you can get away with lots less hardware.  In fact, I would
guess that 1 telebit and one phone line could do it.  The reason is that you
keep the load level.  One outgoing call at any given time, but it is *always*
going.  You just go in a loop calling and updating (unless a delay is desired)

For example a full USENET feed, around 7 megs, is less than one hour of
Telebit time, when compressed.  Thus a single line and modem can feed
at least 20 local sites in this manner.  (Mail is extra)

This is extreme -- you would want more than one line in case of hardware
failure, and more than one machine, but you get the point.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473