Re: Reducing Usenet Bandwidth

[Simon Lyall <simon.lyall () ihug co nz>]

On 3 Feb 2002, Paul Vixie wrote:
> Pull it, rather than pushing it.  nntpcache is a localized example of how
[...]

Proposed by someone every couple of months for the last 10 years (at
least). The current software (diablo especially) even supports it to a
good extent, however nobody is doing it for some reason.

> Pushing netnews, with or without multicast, with or without binaries, is
> just unthinkable at today's volumes but we do it anyway.  The effect of
> increased volume have decreased the utilization of netnews as a media
> amongst my various friends.

Totally wrong on the non-binaries feed bit. A non-binaries feed is around
1-2GB per day or 100-200kb/s  which is below the noise level for anyone on
this list. Even on the semi 3rd world wages I make I could afford a
non-binaries feed to my house and archive it for less than I spend on
lunches.

Binaries on the other hand is completely different, most people can't
afford it and we are moving to a centralized model with the supernews
types companies being the only ones with full feeds out there.

I am really surprised that the RIAA and similar groups havn't "gone after"
usenet to any great degree yet. I can't really see how binaries newsgroups
different in any great extent (from the copyright angle) from your random
p2p network.

Once a few lawsuits are issued (does the ISC count as a distributor?)
against the dozen or so top news providers things could be quite
interesting.

-- 
Simon Lyall.                |  Newsmaster  | Work: simon.lyall () ihug co nz
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