Teksavvy news access down...
JF Mezei
Rogers ending newsgroup access, and this has resulted in its
pre-purchased bandwidth being consumed before the end of their billing
cycle, so newsgroup access is down until (worse case) Jan 4th.
Such service interruptions happened frequently after the influx of istop
customers until they had a good grasp on how much bandwidth to buy to
serve the customers.
I wouldn't be surprised to see them buy a separate block to re-instate
service sooner (even though I am told such blocks cost more). Pretty bad
image after you've gotten a whole bunch of new customers specifically
because you provide NNTP access and such access gets broken for a few
days during their first month with you.
Dick Butterworth
good luck mezei
"JF Mezei" <jfmezei...@teksavvy.com> wrote in message
news:43B9A408...@teksavvy.com...
tsiguy
We haven't had that much of an influx... I'm thinking it's more like,
those who normally use this service used a lot more for the month of
December. We're currently negotiating a few things with Giganews to
better the relationship with them.... We should have better results on
this topic within the next couple of weeks.
More to come soon and sorry for the inconvenience.
Regards,
Rocky
tsiguy
You are obviously not one of our clients as if you were you wouldn't be
making that kind of comment. We are very responsive to all needs and
have been proactive on setting up very high quality service and
hardware. Newsgroups are hard to follow as there's a huge fluctuation
in usage from day to day.
In either case.... we got caught with our pants down over the holidays
not thinking there would be that much downloading at this time of the
year (we were wrong).
Rocky
JF Mezei
> In either case.... we got caught with our pants down over the holidays
Hopefully not by your wife :-)
But it appears you splurged and got the service back on. Thanks.
Some Guy
> Seems that Teksavvy ...
> ... this has resulted in its pre-purchased bandwidth being
> consumed before the end of their billing cycle,
So why don't they enter into an NNTP peering arrangement with someone
so that they don't have to "pay" someone else for news for their
customers?
Or is it too complicated for them to run their own NNTP server?
tsiguy
I don't think we can tell when we've reached the usage cap (will ask
Steve about this)....
Rocky
Dick Butterworth
the servers required and 1TB/day feed costs a lot more than just sourcing it
out.
"Some Guy" <So...@Guy.com> wrote in message news:43BA0BB0...@Guy.com...
Mike
Like I just dont think you get it do you? Its too expensive for
small/large ISPs to run a news server. An ISP like rogers might be able
to get a free peering arangement for news, however teksavvy would not
and would have to pay for it. As well it sucks bandwidth, which costs
money!!!
Robert
They are not the only ones with a problem. I use newshosting and they have a
small issue at the moment too. They are usually PDQ to sort out issues so
jus wait an see I guess. Posting via aioe so not sure how soon this will
propagate.
--
http://www.newshosting.com/?a=72766
http://ca.geocities.com/roger...@rogers.com
Geoffrey Welsh
> Or is it too complicated for them to run their own NNTP server?
Wasn't it you with whom I had a debate on the topic of what's required to
run your own news server?
While Teksavvy won't have nearly as many customers as Bell, Rogers, etc. and
thus the performance side of the requirements would be much lower, it
probably looks worse maintaining all that storage (and, before you say it, I
agree that they should omit the binaries groups and let people who want to
download gigs of binaries pay for their own feed) for a relatively small
number of users who'll use nntp.
--
Geoffrey Welsh <Geoffrey [dot] Welsh [at] bigfoot [dot] com>
Never leave until tomorrow what can wait until next week.
Geoffrey Welsh
> We haven't had that much of an influx...
I don't suppose you have (or would be willing to share) any statistics such
as the absolute number and/or percentage of your subscribers who actually
use nntp?
Thanks,
JF Mezei
> I don't suppose you have (or would be willing to share) any statistics such
> as the absolute number and/or percentage of your subscribers who actually
> use nntp?
Yeah, that would be a very interesting statistic to know.
What is obvious though is that usage is growing.
Dragan Cvetkovic
> While Teksavvy won't have nearly as many customers as Bell, Rogers, etc. and
> thus the performance side of the requirements would be much lower, it
> probably looks worse maintaining all that storage (and, before you say it, I
> agree that they should omit the binaries groups and let people who want to
> download gigs of binaries pay for their own feed) for a relatively small
> number of users who'll use nntp.
Agreed completely. Something like news.individual.net model would be
nice. They charge ca $US10/year (!) for text only accesss, if you want
binaries, go with some commercail NNTP server and pay for it.
I am a teksavvy customer (with a static IP!), but am nevertheless using
indivual.net as I am able to access them from every location (you use
username and password to authenticate, access control is not based on IP).
Bye, Dragan
--
Dragan Cvetkovic,
To be or not to be is true. G. Boole No it isn't. L. E. J. Brouwer
!!! Sender/From address is bogus. Use reply-to one !!!
Roges Hyspeed Internot Slurport
Nah cant be tru rogers says its old hat (sarc)
tsiguy
Ok.... I've been following the Giganews IPs for the last couple of days
and I've identified less than 30 users so far using this service. So,
if I were to round this off to 50 users login in to this it would give
us about 0.5% of our client base.
We've purchased 175GB for your usage which costs us $446.70 for the
Block. Doing the math you can probably see that going any more than
this (5GB cap) doesn't add-up. Basically if we opened it up at higher
speeds and with unlimited usage we'd find ourselves paying without a
doubt over $3,000/month for a 1,000GB (easily done with 30 users
unlimited).
Lets entertain this thought for a minute and see how it adds up:
Retail Charge:
30 users at $33.55 ($29.95 + $4 IP each) = $1,006.50
Cost:
30 users at Approx. $125 (Internet/network/hr/expenses @ $25 + Giganews
@ $100/user avg for a Terabyte combined) = $3,750
Bottom Line:
It just doesn't make sense to entertain this.... The only way this
would add up is if we charged more for the News Service. Free Binaries
just doesn't make sense.
Hope this helps clear things up for all.
Rocky
JF Mezei
> Ok.... I've been following the Giganews IPs for the last couple of days
> and I've identified less than 30 users so far using this service.
If that number is really complete, then I am *really* susprised at how
low it really is.
Then again, only those who ask about NNTP are told about it. It isn't
something you advertise as being available to all those who get $4.00
fixed IPs
> We've purchased 175GB for your usage which costs us $446.70 for the
> Block.
Which means $14.89 per user (30 users), giving each user 5.8 gigs.
Looking at the giganews web pages, for $12.99 USD (roughly CAD 15.10) ,
an individual gets 25 gigs and 10 connections. Looks to me like you are
getting a raw deal with Giganews.
Ideally, you'd find out what the average NNTP user consumes, and provide
that much bandwidh, and charge more for the new users who do consume
much more.
But personally, I find it hard to believe that only 30 customers are
using NNTP.
Marc Bissonnette
news:1137099442.2...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
> Hi all,
>
> Ok.... I've been following the Giganews IPs for the last couple of
> days and I've identified less than 30 users so far using this service.
> So, if I were to round this off to 50 users login in to this it would
> give us about 0.5% of our client base.
>
> We've purchased 175GB for your usage which costs us $446.70 for the
> Block. Doing the math you can probably see that going any more than
> this (5GB cap) doesn't add-up. Basically if we opened it up at higher
> speeds and with unlimited usage we'd find ourselves paying without a
> doubt over $3,000/month for a 1,000GB (easily done with 30 users
> unlimited).
>
> Lets entertain this thought for a minute and see how it adds up:
>
> Retail Charge:
> 30 users at $33.55 ($29.95 + $4 IP each) = $1,006.50
>
> Cost:
> 30 users at Approx. $125 (Internet/network/hr/expenses @ $25 +
> Giganews @ $100/user avg for a Terabyte combined) = $3,750
>
> Bottom Line:
> It just doesn't make sense to entertain this.... The only way this
> would add up is if we charged more for the News Service. Free
> Binaries just doesn't make sense.
>
> Hope this helps clear things up for all.
Hang on a sec...
On the Giganews retail front, it costs CAD$9.29/mo for a single user @2
GB/mo: With you spending $446.7 as a block, that should give you 48 users
@ 2 GB/mo - that's at _retail_ rates, too.
That doesn't sound like such a great deal from Giganews (the $446 for 175
GB - that's $2.54/GB)
I'd think that it would be much more feasible to see if there's something
that could be negotiated with Giganews as a per-account fee; say
$5/mo/user/2GB (basically, a reduced rate for individual accounts) -
purchasing a single block of transfer for all your users means two or
three users can easily wreck it for all the rest of them (which is what
looks like what happened) - that or throttle the total NNTP transfer per
customer on your side...
(Mind you, if you did the per-customer $5-7 / month deal, you might have
to offer nntp services as a paid extra).
Still, though, I would think that $446 per month still saves you a bundle
over running your own nntp services (server+bandwidth+person hours
maintenance)
I think given there is a real trend in Canadian ISPs starting up to
outsource NNTP that perhaps offering nntp as a paid extra is going to be
a lot more common. ( I can see and even argue against this as being a
"Good Thing(tm)", but frankly, given the restrictions that you'd have to
put on the bulk-purchased nntp accounts, I'm happy with paying the $9 per
month for my own Giganews account, given the speed and completion rate it
provides over my own ISP - NRTCO - outsourced solution (They outsource to
Sympatico)
>
> Rocky
>
> Roges Hyspeed Internot Slurport wrote:
>> "JF Mezei" <jfmezei...@teksavvy.com> wrote in message
>> news:43BAEBB5...@teksavvy.com...
>> > Geoffrey Welsh wrote:
>> >> I don't suppose you have (or would be willing to share) any
>> >> statistics such
>> >> as the absolute number and/or percentage of your subscribers who
>> >> actually use nntp?
>> >
>> > Yeah, that would be a very interesting statistic to know.
>> >
>> > What is obvious though is that usage is growing.
>>
>> Nah cant be tru rogers says its old hat (sarc)
>> --
>> http://www.newshosting.com/?a=72766
>> http://ca.geocities.com/roger...@rogers.com
>
--
Marc Bissonnette
Looking for a new ISP? http://www.canadianisp.com
Largest ISP comparison site across Canada.
tsiguy
The number I gave was actually nearly double the posted number on the
amount of nntp users over Giganews on our service. Over the last two
days I'd observed 15 unique users so I bloated the number to be safe in
case some were once-a-monthers.... From what I can see to date, very
few are using the service and those who are are sucking as much as is
available (ie: 3 connections and in some cases, for those who have
multiple IPs, a combination of both, allowing for more than 5GB).
In any case, the numbers doen't add-up and you are right, the pricing
sucks.... Here's the latest email from them on the current offers.....
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 3:45 PM
To: Steve
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: Information]
Steve,
I was told we can do the 5GB connections at USD $9.00 per connection
This would provide you, should act on 40 connections with only 200GB of
transfer, which is above what any monthly total has been for you so
far.
(40) 5GB Connections @ USD $9.00 per connection = USD$360.00 per month
Let me know if you want a formal quote for that.
If you are still aiming to get to the 300-400GB transfer range, we can
always provide a quote for (40) 10GB connections, but of course
pricewise this is heading up and not equal to or lower than your
current
connection costs.
Let me know,
John
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So for going to 10 times the quatity than the average client we're
shaving a total of approximately $30....
We're going to be tied to TORIX in the days to come and will enquire
about the suck feeds and to see what's involved..... maybe that might
be an option?!
PS - I'd love to please everyone but this one's a tough one!
More to come soon.
Rocky
tsiguy
*** Just noticed.... that's 100 times more not 10 times more!***
JF Mezei
> > amount of nntp users over Giganews on our service. Over the last two
> > days I'd observed 15 unique users so I bloated the number to be safe in
> > case some were once-a-monthers....
how about those accessing the text-only service ?
If you ask your tech and sale folks, would they agree that only 15
customers are interested, or would they tell you thata far greater
percentage of recent customer signups mentioned news access ?
Chris F.A. Johnson
> Hey Marc/JF,
>
> The number I gave was actually nearly double the posted number on the
> amount of nntp users over Giganews on our service. Over the last two
> days I'd observed 15 unique users so I bloated the number to be safe in
> case some were once-a-monthers.... From what I can see to date, very
> few are using the service and those who are are sucking as much as is
> available (ie: 3 connections and in some cases, for those who have
> multiple IPs, a combination of both, allowing for more than 5GB).
I'm using leafnode to pull down a few dozen text-only groups, many
of which have little or no traffic, and post a couple of dozen or
so messages per day. I doubt that I'm anywhere close to the max.
--
Chris F.A. Johnson <http://cfaj.freeshell.org>
===================================================================
Author:
Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)
Marc Bissonnette
news:1137124777.8...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> Hey Marc/JF,
>
> The number I gave was actually nearly double the posted number on the
> amount of nntp users over Giganews on our service. Over the last two
> days I'd observed 15 unique users so I bloated the number to be safe
> in case some were once-a-monthers.... From what I can see to date,
> very few are using the service and those who are are sucking as much
> as is available (ie: 3 connections and in some cases, for those who
> have multiple IPs, a combination of both, allowing for more than 5GB).
>
> In any case, the numbers doen't add-up and you are right, the pricing
> sucks.... Here's the latest email from them on the current
> offers.....
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> -------------------------------- Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Damn, that really does bite.
Much as I like the idea of the one-stop ISP, I'm also a realist in that
an ISP has _got_ to be able to make money in order to continue. When
you've got <1% of users sucking down service so that >99% of the users
cannot enjoy it, or enjoy it at reduced capability, that's when it's time
to look at change.
IIRC, Giganews differentiates it's servers between text and binaries
groups - Perhaps it's worth two thoughts:
1) Ask Giganews if you can restrict access to the non-binaries groups.
2) Inform customers that because of rising costs and upcoming service
improvements, you're releasing binaries groups from your usenet feed. In
a perfect world, you'd get Giganews (or whomever) to offer their
commercial usenet feeds at a discounted per-user rate (I.e. a "Teksavvy"
reduced rate, even if it were only 10% off the stated retail rate from
their site)
(Putting on asbestos undergarments for those who will really, _really_
hate this idea)
tsiguy
they are.... We're watching the usage on a daily basis (Giganews has
poor reporting so it's hard to see who does what from a traffic
stand-point... have to watch the IP users and the traffic graph) to not
let it run dry (boobooed over the holidays and we ran out without my
knowing).
JF: I'm the one who analyses things and I also participate in
sales/marketing efforts. As an owner it's my job to know what goes on
at least a little. :-) The nntp world as you can probably tell from
looking around you are driven by a small number of people now. As time
rolls forward I have a feeling nntp access will be used less and
less... Most of the same information/files/etc.. are simply found
searching on google or other search engines.
Chris: Wasn't pointing fingures.... Some people pushed for
answers/numbers, so I gave some...
In any case... As mentioned above, I have no doubt that Binaries will
find themselves becoming more and more of a problem for ISPs.....
Margins are thin so when services like nntp are weighed in it doesn't
take long to math out.
Rocky
JF Mezei
> an ISP has _got_ to be able to make money in order to continue. When
> you've got <1% of users sucking down service so that >99% of the users
> cannot enjoy it, or enjoy it at reduced capability, that's when it's time
> to look at change.
In fairness, consider that with teksavvy, access to the full feed is
available only to those who pay a $4.00 surcharge for a fixed IP.
(something which costs nothing to the ISP), the "less than 1%" figures
is perhaps misleading. One should look at statistics of number of NNTP
users vs number of Fixed IP users.
However, we should still be profitable to Teksavvy.
One thing which bugs me. If there is a true 5gig limit, and most users
use far less than 5 gigs in a month, it must mean that some users vastly
exceed their 5 gig allowance.
Perhaps truly enforcing the 5 gig limit might be a solution.
I really find it hard to believe that only 15 users would use
news-corp.teksavvy.com. There has to be more than that. And because
theis is such a small sample, any change in numbers will dramatically
change the cost per user.
> 2) Inform customers that because of rising costs and upcoming service
> improvements, you're releasing binaries groups from your usenet feed.
This would be bad PR. Reducing the limit to 2 gigs and giving customers
opportunity to buy extra capacity at an advantageous rate would perhaps
be the best way.
This would be an interesting administrative challenge since you'd then
be getting individual 2 gig accounts based on the fixed Ip of the
customer, and get Giganews to cut off service wben an individual
customer hits 2 gigs.
Or perhaps use teksavvy's radius server for authentication. Teksavvy can
control who gets access and would give users 2gigs subscription and then
be able to add capacity if user willing to pay extra. And the advantage
of this is that Teksavvy could also offer access to those who are not on
a fixed IP if they pay for the service.
> (Putting on asbestos undergarments for those who will really, _really_
> hate this idea)
Beware, you may get uncomfortable itches and rashes.
Marc Bissonnette
> Marc Bissonnette wrote:
>> an ISP has _got_ to be able to make money in order to continue. When
>> you've got <1% of users sucking down service so that >99% of the
>> users cannot enjoy it, or enjoy it at reduced capability, that's when
>> it's time to look at change.
>
> In fairness, consider that with teksavvy, access to the full feed is
> available only to those who pay a $4.00 surcharge for a fixed IP.
> (something which costs nothing to the ISP), the "less than 1%" figures
> is perhaps misleading. One should look at statistics of number of NNTP
> users vs number of Fixed IP users.
Well, not that it costs them "nothing" for the IPs, just very little -
they still have to apply for and pay for the /8s/16s/32s, etc. as an ISP
> However, we should still be profitable to Teksavvy.
Well, it's the $X/month that is the profit, minus the monthly DSLAM
charge paid to Bell (Which, IMO, is too high - Bell should be lowering
that by a lot in order to truly encourage competition - something that
would only happen with CRTC or other government intervention)
> One thing which bugs me. If there is a true 5gig limit, and most users
> use far less than 5 gigs in a month, it must mean that some users
> vastly exceed their 5 gig allowance.
>
> Perhaps truly enforcing the 5 gig limit might be a solution.
Yeah, but that becomes a PR issue in itself. I think that many/most ISPs
basically set their bit caps as 'soft' caps: This way, if a user goes
over it by a reasonable amount only 10% of the time, no one is really
hurt: The ISP makes up for it by the other users who stay far under the
cap and the user benefits by being able to go over when necessary. It's
those that go over by 1000% consistantly that really hit the ISP in the
margin book.
> I really find it hard to believe that only 15 users would use
> news-corp.teksavvy.com. There has to be more than that. And because
> theis is such a small sample, any change in numbers will dramatically
> change the cost per user.
<shrug> might be a slightly higher number, but I hear the average is
still 5% of all subscribers are those that use Usenet.
>> 2) Inform customers that because of rising costs and upcoming service
>> improvements, you're releasing binaries groups from your usenet feed.
>
> This would be bad PR. Reducing the limit to 2 gigs and giving
> customers opportunity to buy extra capacity at an advantageous rate
> would perhaps be the best way.
>
> This would be an interesting administrative challenge since you'd then
> be getting individual 2 gig accounts based on the fixed Ip of the
> customer, and get Giganews to cut off service wben an individual
> customer hits 2 gigs.
Well, you wouldn't need the individual IPs at all, since it would
basically be reselling the Giganews retail packages - users would simply
set their news server as news.giganews.com and be done with it. Giganews,
seeing that the IP was from Teksavvy's range, and the userid and password
didn't match an individual Giganews subscriber, would simply allow the
connection with a 2 GB/month limit
> Or perhaps use teksavvy's radius server for authentication. Teksavvy
> can control who gets access and would give users 2gigs subscription
> and then be able to add capacity if user willing to pay extra. And the
> advantage of this is that Teksavvy could also offer access to those
> who are not on a fixed IP if they pay for the service.
>
>> (Putting on asbestos undergarments for those who will really,
>> _really_ hate this idea)
>
> Beware, you may get uncomfortable itches and rashes.
Yeah, I know; It's also easy for me to say: I'm not the ISP who'd be
making the change :) Mind you, when I did work management in other ISPs,
I *was* still more preferential to the draconian approach: Make the
change that benefits the most customers *and* the ISP and deal with the
complainers briefly: Explain the need for the change and if they really
didn't like it, refund them for a month and ask them to politely move
along.
Walter Dnes (delete the 'z' to get my real address)
> We've purchased 175GB for your usage which costs us $446.70 for the
> Block. Doing the math you can probably see that...
I can see that you got the royal shaft. See http://news.astraweb.com
*RETAIL TO END-USERS* cost is 280GB for US$100. Even assuming that
you're quoting in $CDN, you're still doing badly. You would need lots
of end-users accessing the same content to make it pay for you. And you
have to run your own server, versus the supplier sending out only one
copy of each article, reducing their bandwidth costs versus retail
customers. See http://news.astraweb.com/corporate.html for ISP plans.
--
Walter Dnes; my email address is *ALMOST* like wzal...@waltdnes.org
Delete the "z" to get my real address. If that gets blocked, follow
the instructions at the end of the 550 message.
tsiguy
I'll definitely look into this!
Thanks,
Rocky
tsiguy
Here's the ISP account option:
Outsourcing:
Outsourcing is suited towards ISPs who do not have the infrastructure
to setup and maintain a full newsfeed. Your users connect directly to
our servers, saving bandwidth and server maintenance costs.
You will be provided with an IP address (point your news host to it,
eg. news.yourdomain.com) and all connections to the IP will be "fully
virtual". Even the connect message will broadcast your address. Our
server will be invisible to your users.
Pricing is per port, not per user. If you purchase 10 ports, it means
that at any one time, 10 connections may be made to the server. A ratio
of 10 users per port is usually adequate. This means that if you have
100 dial-up users connected to your ISP at any one time, you will
require 10 ports from us.
Authenthication can be done via IP blocks or via a custom
authenthication program.
Min purchase: 10 ports
Recommendation:
Our 10 Kbyte/s port is recommended for dialup/ISDN users.
Our 75 Kbyte/s port is recommended for DSL/cable users.
Price per port, limited to 10 KBytes/s: $10/Month
Price per port, limited to 75 KBytes/s: $75/Month
As you can tell we're probably better off staying with Giganews. This
also shows us that most nntp service providers likely don't want ISPs
as both Astraweb and Giganews seem to give better pricing on a per user
basis (retail) than for ISPs....
Rocky
Yo Ho Ho
news:1137164240....@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> As you can tell we're probably better off staying with Giganews. This
> also shows us that most nntp service providers likely don't want ISPs
> as both Astraweb and Giganews seem to give better pricing on a per
> user basis (retail) than for ISPs....
I wonder why it is that no one is taking advantage of the Canadian
dollar to open a commercial news service in Canada? You would think that
they could operate at lower costs here and price the service very
attractively to the US market.
I remember when I was with Idirect they were very interested in
commercial news at one time.
I guess it must be bandwidth costs??
Geoffrey Welsh
> I've been following the Giganews IPs for the last couple of days
Thanks for the info; it's a lot better than the data we had before.
Still, I would not draw any significant conclusions from a measurement that
didn't span at least two weekends, preferrably more.
Chris F.A. Johnson
>
> Chris: Wasn't pointing fingures.... Some people pushed for
> answers/numbers, so I gave some...
I didn 't think you were, but your statement, "From what I can
see to date, very few are using the service and those who are are
sucking as much as is available," implied that all those using it
were maxing out the service.
Either your figures have left out others, who are using NNTP but
not to that extent, or the statement is an aggregate, and some are
using considerably more than their share.
David Magda
> This would be an interesting administrative challenge since you'd
> then be getting individual 2 gig accounts based on the fixed Ip of
> the customer, and get Giganews to cut off service wben an individual
> customer hits 2 gigs.
Traffic could be tracked using NetFlow. The collector could simply
keep a running total of bytes transfered between the client and news
server. If the collector is a Unix-based system you could probably
script most of it (Perl, Python, shell, etc.).
I'm mostly guessing here as I haven't done much with NetFlow, but
coneceptually once you have data on a Unix system (Linux, BSD,
Solaris) in a somewhat standard / normalized format you can munge it
just about any way you want.
--
David Magda <dmagda at ee.ryerson.ca>
Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under
the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well
under the new. -- Niccolo Machiavelli, _The Prince_, Chapter VI
David Magda
> I guess it must be bandwidth costs??
While bandwidth is said to be generally dropping on a per bit basis,
the number of bits used for Usenet seems to keep rising. (At least if
you're talking about alt.binaries.*.)
Yo Ho Ho
news:m2u0c7e...@gandalf.local:
> While bandwidth is said to be generally dropping on a per bit basis,
> the number of bits used for Usenet seems to keep rising. (At least if
> you're talking about alt.binaries.*.)
Well, I am talking about full news feeds. But mostly I was wondering why
it's not feesable or even very feisable to run a comerical news service
from Canada. Many other American business have moved to Ontar-i-o and
New Brunsick to take advantage of the Canadian dollar.
JF Mezei
> Well, I am talking about full news feeds. But mostly I was wondering why
> it's not feesable or even very feisable to run a comerical news service
> from Canada. Many other American business have moved to Ontar-i-o and
> New Brunsick to take advantage of the Canadian dollar.
I would say that one aspect is lack of connectivity.
When you look at connectivity to the USA from 151 Front in Trwanna, it
is probably pale in comparison to what is available in Chicago,
washington suburbs in Virginia and New York as well as California.
For the big news servers, peering saves a lot of money. The more major
networks they can peer with the better.
And locating in Toronto doesn't give you the canadian market because
outfits like Bell only peer with americans.
having said this, if you build it , they will come. (with the addition
of "and price it competitively"). The problem now is that if canadian
ISPs are dropping NNTP service as part of the standard offering, it
reduces the market potential for wholesale accounts that are probably
more lucrative.
tsiguy
I've been looking into the issue of pricing for us and got this as
information:
The reason ISPs have such shitty nntp rates from places like Giganews
and others is that with residential users the nntp service provider can
bank on the majority not using the service maximum while with the ISP
they can always bank that 95% of the time the max will be met.
So, as you can no doubt figure.... The nntp service providers either
make little or no money on ISPs, thus the crappy rates.
Rocky
Marc Bissonnette
@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
Hrm, no surprises, there: In other words, they *want* you to drop the feed
entirely and send them the users to take the retail rates...
(Which, of course, is a smart move from the NSPs, but still sucks vacuum
for the ISPs)
JF Mezei
> The reason ISPs have such shitty nntp rates from places like Giganews
> and others is that with residential users the nntp service provider can
> bank on the majority not using the service maximum while with the ISP
> they can always bank that 95% of the time the max will be met.
That is not a valid excuse.
If the average user consumes 1 gig and the lowest individual package
starts at 2 gigs, then you can vet that the average users will only
consume half his bandwidth. And one user cannot steal bandwidth
allocated to another user. And when the abuser exceeds his 2 gigs, he
needs to buy more bandwidth.
But with an ISP account, one user can use another's bandwidth because
there are no hard limits imposed on users. And the ISp will only buy the
bandwidth that is needed so at the end of the month, there is less
unused bandwidth than if each user bought their own 2gisg and used only half.
The problem with their mentality is that their difficult pricing will
result in ISPs no longer outsourcing to NNTP companies and users stuck
buying individual accounts. And for giganews, because their rates are
higher than astraweb for instance, they stand to lose more unless they
start to provide prepaid bandwidth that doesn't expire.
And in the end, if the NNTP guys like Giganews continue to make it more
difficult/expensive to maintain NNTP access, they will truly shift usage
to other technologies and put themselves out of a job.
Marc Bissonnette
Ya got it all wrong. Giganews has been growing in leaps and bounds _because
of_ their pricing strategy. They _know_ (I'm assuming here, but these are
educated guesses) that nntp services are becoming too expensive for ISPs to
keep in-house. Why would they want, in the long-term, for an ISP to keep
the service in-house, or farm it out at wholesale, when they can get the
end user paying retail rates ?
Keep in mind: ~5% of an ISP's clientele use Usenet: Hardly a high enough
number to go bust over if the choice is dropping nntp and staying
profitable, or telling the users to get it from a 3rd party.
JF Mezei
> Ya got it all wrong. Giganews has been growing in leaps and bounds _because
> of_ their pricing strategy. They _know_ (I'm assuming here, but these are
> educated guesses) that nntp services are becoming too expensive for ISPs to
> keep in-house.
But once a trend begins where ISPs tell their customers that NNTP is
dates from pre-historic times and has been replaced by blogs, this
pricing strategy no longer works. The competition is switching from
in-house NNTP servers to public and free web based forums and blogs. (I
agree that those are not a replacement for NNTP, but from a marketing
and general public's point of view, that is what they believe).
Look at what Rogers has just done and said.
If one wants NNTP to grow, one must make it easy for ISPs to provide the
service at very low cost.
tsiguy
JF: The excuse is very valid for the nntp provider when it comes to
usage.... If they know Teksavvy will always use the 175GB block they've
purchased.... They won't be making money unless they charge moneymaking
rates to compensate for TekSavvy 100%ish usage. The average Joe might
use half the purchased amount (there is where they make the money).
You are biased in this case as you use nntp service regularly, and
that's fine, you back what you preach! ;-)
Marc: I'm thinking your number is smaller than 5%. I provide a niche
market for static IP customers. Of our approximately 10K customer
base, about 7K is DSL related... of them about 1,400 are Static IP
users. I'm betting based on the fact that we've got people who are
deemed more knowledgeable on DSL that our numbers will likely be higher
than the norm and we're less than 1% (I'll try and do my testing for a
longer period of the next month). The number is probably lower when
you single out Binary users (which probably near 80%, or more, use this
service for "not-so-legal" purposes).
So... based on what I just wrote to Marc I don't blame Rogers for
dumping nntp service all together.... As much as it might "P" off a
few people (nntp binary users), they are likely not doing it because of
money but rather because of the principle. I'm betting the biggest
reason for them removing nntp (particularly binaries) service might be
because they sell movies and either saw it to be cross-market
prohibitive or maybe they got pressure from the industry to help in the
fight (don't know).
In any case, there's a place for nntp service on the web (just like
porn or gambling sites) but with the coming of new legislation on ISP
watch-dog type things we're (ISPs) more than likely going to be forced
to drop to text only or no nntp service anyway.
Will follow up in the near future with larger sample result but as I
said, I rounded from 15 identified unique users over two days to 50 for
sake of argument.
Rocky
Marc Bissonnette
> Marc Bissonnette wrote:
>> Ya got it all wrong. Giganews has been growing in leaps and bounds
>> _because of_ their pricing strategy. They _know_ (I'm assuming here,
>> but these are educated guesses) that nntp services are becoming too
>> expensive for ISPs to keep in-house.
>
>
> But once a trend begins where ISPs tell their customers that NNTP is
> dates from pre-historic times and has been replaced by blogs, this
> pricing strategy no longer works. The competition is switching from
> in-house NNTP servers to public and free web based forums and blogs.
> (I agree that those are not a replacement for NNTP, but from a
> marketing and general public's point of view, that is what they
> believe).
>
>
> Look at what Rogers has just done and said.
Good thing you made that clarification :)
I would be really surprised if a real ISP said anything along the same
lines (Usenet being replaced by blogs and crap) - If anything, the
population of Usenet would be surprised to learn they'd been replaced.
> If one wants NNTP to grow, one must make it easy for ISPs to provide
> the service at very low cost.
Sure, but in the context of this sub-discussion, Giganews wants Giganews to
grow, which is perfectly understandable :)
JF Mezei
> usage.... If they know Teksavvy will always use the 175GB block they've
> purchased.... They won't be making money unless they charge moneymaking
> rates to compensate for TekSavvy 100%ish usage.
In your current setup , correct.
But if you could get individual accounts, authenticated via your radius
server, and each account were given 2 gigs of bandwidth, then Giganews
would be far more affordable to you since the 3 guys who download 170
gigs would no longer be able to steal bandwdith from the rest of the
users who only use 5 gigs total ;-).
The current structure doesn't prevent abuses, and you (the ISP) are the
one paying for it.
> base, about 7K is DSL related... of them about 1,400 are Static IP
> users.
That is 20% of your DSL customers. And one of the reasons is that your
fixed IP rate is amongst the few which are affordable. And don't you
dare change that :-( :-(
> you single out Binary users (which probably near 80%, or more, use this
> service for "not-so-legal" purposes).
I take offense to this statement. If you have 1 user downloading 170
gigs of warez, and 1000 users downloading perfectly legitimate stuff, is
it right to accuse your users of using this service for "not-so-legal"
purposes ?
And there are legitimate binary doanloads. comp.* has a number of
binaries, sources groups for instance.
More importantly, while one might rarely use the binary groups, you want
to be able to use them at a moment's notice should the need arise.
> So... based on what I just wrote to Marc I don't blame Rogers for
> dumping nntp service all together....
They are not good netizens by not providing one of the core services
that make up the internet.
> reason for them removing nntp (particularly binaries) service might be
> because they sell movies and either saw it to be cross-market
> prohibitive or maybe they got pressure from the industry to help in the
> fight (don't know).
I strongly suspect that any movie distributed via NNTP will have far
less than NTSC quality. More like 160*120 image size and mono sound etc.
Does that really compete against the real movies ?
> watch-dog type things we're (ISPs) more than likely going to be forced
> to drop to text only or no nntp service anyway.
Forced ????? If that happens, there might be a lot of public opposition
to this. Canadians are not like the sheep americans who have
let/encouraged their government to impose 1984 police state laws.
And if ISPs stopped saying that NNTP is only for warez, it would
definitely help the situation. There are newsgroups that show the beauty
of the female body in artistic (and not so artistic :-) ways for
instance. Has it become illegal to admire a creation of god ? :-) There
are newsgroups that have pictures of trains. Others for pictures of
aircraft, other for cars etc etc etc.
If warez newsgroups are a problem, then remove those newsgroups instead
of removing the whole nntp thing. And if you block NNTP, warez
distributors will find other methodss. (subscribe to a distribution list
vioa email for instance).
Marc Bissonnette
> tsiguy wrote:
>> usage.... If they know Teksavvy will always use the 175GB block
>> they've purchased.... They won't be making money unless they charge
>> moneymaking rates to compensate for TekSavvy 100%ish usage.
>
> In your current setup , correct.
>
> But if you could get individual accounts, authenticated via your
> radius server, and each account were given 2 gigs of bandwidth, then
> Giganews would be far more affordable to you since the 3 guys who
> download 170 gigs would no longer be able to steal bandwdith from the
> rest of the users who only use 5 gigs total ;-).
>
> The current structure doesn't prevent abuses, and you (the ISP) are
> the one paying for it.
>
>> base, about 7K is DSL related... of them about 1,400 are Static IP
>> users.
>
> That is 20% of your DSL customers. And one of the reasons is that
> your fixed IP rate is amongst the few which are affordable. And don't
> you dare change that :-( :-(
>
>> you single out Binary users (which probably near 80%, or more, use
>> this service for "not-so-legal" purposes).
>
> I take offense to this statement. If you have 1 user downloading 170
> gigs of warez, and 1000 users downloading perfectly legitimate stuff,
> is it right to accuse your users of using this service for
> "not-so-legal" purposes ?
JF, don't wreck a perfectly good discussion by getting on an illusionary
high horse.
Do you _honestly_ think that the majority of binaries traffic (or P2P,
for that matter), is legitimate (i.e. not the illegal transfer of
copyright protected material) usage ?
If you do, I've got a sun-drenched beach to sell you in Iqaluit.
> And there are legitimate binary doanloads. comp.* has a number of
> binaries, sources groups for instance.
Sure: Now compare the number of legitimate binaries groups with
illegitimate ones. Even the law of averages (not to mention actual
traffic analysis for content) says that illegal content transfer will
make up the bulk of the bandwidth used.
> More importantly, while one might rarely use the binary groups, you
> want to be able to use them at a moment's notice should the need
> arise.
>
>
>> So... based on what I just wrote to Marc I don't blame Rogers for
>> dumping nntp service all together....
>
> They are not good netizens by not providing one of the core services
> that make up the internet.
Don't make the mistake of equating good netizenship with good business.
They still have stockholders to answer to; Providing a service at a loss
for less than five percent of your lowest-profit users simply doesn't
make a good business case for a large ISP of Roger's scale.
>> reason for them removing nntp (particularly binaries) service might
>> be because they sell movies and either saw it to be cross-market
>> prohibitive or maybe they got pressure from the industry to help in
>> the fight (don't know).
>
> I strongly suspect that any movie distributed via NNTP will have far
> less than NTSC quality. More like 160*120 image size and mono sound
> etc. Does that really compete against the real movies ?
Even if that were true, it doesn't negate the fact that it equates to
lost profits.
>> watch-dog type things we're (ISPs) more than likely going to be
>> forced to drop to text only or no nntp service anyway.
>
> Forced ????? If that happens, there might be a lot of public
> opposition to this. Canadians are not like the sheep americans who
> have let/encouraged their government to impose 1984 police state laws.
>
> And if ISPs stopped saying that NNTP is only for warez, it would
> definitely help the situation. There are newsgroups that show the
> beauty of the female body in artistic (and not so artistic :-) ways
> for instance. Has it become illegal to admire a creation of god ? :-)
> There are newsgroups that have pictures of trains. Others for pictures
> of aircraft, other for cars etc etc etc.
Sure, and a great percentage of those images, especially the
alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.* hierarchies contain copyrighted images
that have been stolen from commercial sites/feeds/magazines/videos/etc
> If warez newsgroups are a problem, then remove those newsgroups
> instead of removing the whole nntp thing.
The problem with that is that you are then excercising editorial control
over your feed, putting the common carrier status at risk. IStar learned
this the hard way and, IIRC, this has been tested in Canadian courts (I
could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure of it)
> And if you block NNTP, warez distributors will find other methodss.
> (subscribe to a distribution list vioa email for instance).
Which is a lot more traceable, which means law enforcement would just
*love* it: You've just given a reason to shut down nntp binaries.
I'm not trying to harp on you, JF, but I really think that you are
looking at the whole situation solely from the end-user's POV. In order
to truly understand the situation, you really have to look at it from
both yours _and_ the ISP's POV.
Yo Ho Ho
> I strongly suspect that any movie distributed via NNTP will have far
> less than NTSC quality. More like 160*120 image size and mono sound
> etc. Does that really compete against the real movies ?
You don't get out to the binaries much do you.:) There are full dvd
quality movies all over USENET. Check a.b.dvdr, but they take a bit to
download. Even better, there is all this mpeg 4 stuff, divx and xvid,
that is quick and easy to download and can be reencoded right back up to
dvd quality in a bit over an hour with a P4 2.4 Gig or so machine. Right
now there are DVD screeners available in a.b.dvd.movies for almost any
movie that is looking to win an Academy award. Almost every new movie is
released to the Internet scene in some form within days of being in the
theater and many even before theater release. Harry Potter, King Kong,
Narnia all of them were available with in days.
And even better, check out groups like a.b.documentaries. Lots of great
stuff in there in DVD and mpeg formats.
JF Mezei
> Do you _honestly_ think that the majority of binaries traffic (or P2P,
> for that matter), is legitimate (i.e. not the illegal transfer of
> copyright protected material) usage ?
Abuses should not prevent legitimate uses.
> If you do, I've got a sun-drenched beach to sell you in Iqaluit.
Just outside of Iqaluit, along the 10km road, there are really nice
beaches. And remember that in the summer, it is truly sun drenched with
bvreathtaking views of icebergs moving in and out of the bay with the tides.
Beaides, with Reform set to be elected, haven't they proposed to build a
large military port ? in which case, your beach may be worth a lot more
when they want to destroy it to build the big military port.
> Don't make the mistake of equating good netizenship with good business.
Which is why I feel that Giganews is making a mistake when it ofers bulk
sales at higher cost than individual sales. The fewer ISPs that buy bulk
access, the less NNTP will be popular and may in fact fade into oblivion
like Gopher, veronica etc. Giganews should be making it easy for ISPs to
sign up and still make a profit on customers who use NNTP.
> Sure, and a great percentage of those images, especially the
> alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.* hierarchies contain copyrighted images
> that have been stolen from commercial sites/feeds/magazines/videos/etc
Maybe. Or it could be those sites making "publicty" by posting sample
images with a link to their money making website.
> The problem with that is that you are then excercising editorial control
> over your feed, putting the common carrier status at risk. IStar learned
> this the hard way and,
That is a very valid point. But take a look at the alt groups carried by
many commercial servers.
And even some non alt groups like:
-icrosoft,,0,41e9f6b7,27965
-icrosoft.public,,0,41e9f6b7,27966
-icrosoft.public.access,,0,41e9f6b7,27967
-icrosoft.public.access.devtoolkits,,1,41e9f6b7,27968
-icrosoft.public.word,,0,41e9f6b7,27975
-icrosoft.public.word.macword98,,1,41e9f6b7,27976
And there are many clones like:
01alt.binaries.pictures,,0,41e9f5d9,11c1a
__.www.babe-land,,0,41e9f64a,1e585
__.www.babe-land.com,,1,41e9f64a,1e586
a.b.warez,,0,41e9f6e1,2a135
a.b.warez.german,,0,41e9f6e1,2a136
a.b.warez.german.cdrwin,,1,41e9f6e1,2a137
a.b.warez.ibm-pc,,0,41e9f6e1,2a138
a.b.warez.ibm-pc.games,,1,41e9f6e1,2a139
a.b.warez.ibm-pc.german,,1,41e9f6e1,2a13a
The above are pretty obvious. But they are in the "a" hiearchy which
shoudln't have been permitted to begin with.
And how about this one:
ab.u.usvq.n.fyxqwsfvl.i.v.vl.p.jw.bfys.w.zryx.gmxq.f
And this one:
acadia.hw.sxdn.s.e.mxlrbn.sznif.q.qtykmnsurqb.ri.wr.k.dt.fh.xsw.eeo
As a matter of fact "acadia" hiearchy has lots of similar meaningless newsgroups.
And then you get the spelling mistakes:
adt.banaraes.pictures.erotica.breasts
(there are a lot of similar groups in adt.banaraes so it is intentional
creation of rogue groups).
adt.flame.montgomery-wood,,0,41e9f696,267e9
adt.flame.montgomery-wood.arrogant-fobbing-fat-kidneyed-giglet,,1,41e9f696,267ea
adt.flame.montgomery-wood.round-the-bend-fawning-elf-skinned-miscreant,,1,41e9f6af,26fa1
adt.h`.ai.px.kc.rr.ai.me.ee.fetish.cancel
al.binaries.pictures.erotica
allt.sex
alt.**禮貝
alt.0.0.0.0.0.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1.1
alt.a.b.c.d.e.f.g.h.i.j.k.l.m.n.o.p.q.r.s.t.u.v.w.x.y.z
alt.alien.vampire.flonk.flonk.flonk.jet-does-not-know.what-upa.is.but-knows-what.it-is-not
alt.arse-bandit.keith-wigdor.aka.jbenway.prefers.to-sodomize.little.boys.unf.unf.unf
Amd I am only picking the more visible groups. There are TONS of fake
newsgroups, intentional mispellings etc.
They even cloned the initial joke on usenet:
alt.bainaries.pictures.erotica.bestiality.hamster.duct-tape
-----------------------
This can't go on indefinitely without some form of control over creation
of bogus newsgroups.
> I'm not trying to harp on you, JF, but I really think that you are
> looking at the whole situation solely from the end-user's POV. In order
> to truly understand the situation, you really have to look at it from
> both yours _and_ the ISP's POV.
I see NNTP as being threathened. If one can reduce the amout of abuse,
the NNTP would become far more viable. In the big 8, there is some form
of control and you must present a viable plan to create a newsgroup
(espercially moderated ones).
But the rest of totally out of control.
I don't agree with ISPs who decide to dump NNTP because "it is nothing
but warez". They should instead simply carry legitimate newsgroups from
the big 8 as well as other "managed" hiearchies.
If faces with total shutdown of NNTP, I would rather it survive in a
more moderated/managed form so that the good bits would survive, even if
it means that the true "free speech" aspect that allowed everyone and
anyone to create any and all newsgroups they wanted would no longer be supported.
Marc Bissonnette
> Marc Bissonnette wrote:
>> Do you _honestly_ think that the majority of binaries traffic (or
>> P2P, for that matter), is legitimate (i.e. not the illegal transfer
>> of copyright protected material) usage ?
>
> Abuses should not prevent legitimate uses.
In a perfect world, yes. When abuses make a service unprofitable and
there are laws that prevent the corrective actions necessary, serious
thought at dropping the service needs to be made.
>> If you do, I've got a sun-drenched beach to sell you in Iqaluit.
>
> Just outside of Iqaluit, along the 10km road, there are really nice
> beaches. And remember that in the summer, it is truly sun drenched
> with bvreathtaking views of icebergs moving in and out of the bay with
> the tides.
>
> Beaides, with Reform set to be elected, haven't they proposed to build
> a large military port ? in which case, your beach may be worth a lot
> more when they want to destroy it to build the big military port.
>
>> Don't make the mistake of equating good netizenship with good
>> business.
>
> Which is why I feel that Giganews is making a mistake when it ofers
> bulk sales at higher cost than individual sales. The fewer ISPs that
> buy bulk access, the less NNTP will be popular and may in fact fade
> into oblivion like Gopher, veronica etc. Giganews should be making it
> easy for ISPs to sign up and still make a profit on customers who use
> NNTP.
How do you suggest that ? As Rocky already pointed out, when they buy
bulk transfer, it is quickly used up by a minority of the minority using
the service. If they did individual user logins to the NSP, then the NSP
stands to make more money by attempting to attract those users at the
retail level. NNTP isn't going to fade anytime soon. Hell, the comp.*
groups alone would carry on in one form or another, not to mention the
tens of thousands of others that have had regular subscribers for
decades.
>> Sure, and a great percentage of those images, especially the
>> alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.* hierarchies contain copyrighted
>> images that have been stolen from commercial
>> sites/feeds/magazines/videos/etc
>
> Maybe. Or it could be those sites making "publicty" by posting sample
> images with a link to their money making website.
Have you done an article count on any of the erotica groups, lately ?
Didn't think so. Your argument is silly (sorry, but it is)
You obviously don't understand that usenet is a controlled anarchy (yes,
that is an intentional oxymoron, but valid, nonetheless)
>> I'm not trying to harp on you, JF, but I really think that you are
>> looking at the whole situation solely from the end-user's POV. In
>> order to truly understand the situation, you really have to look at
>> it from both yours _and_ the ISP's POV.
>
>
> I see NNTP as being threathened. If one can reduce the amout of abuse,
> the NNTP would become far more viable. In the big 8, there is some
> form of control and you must present a viable plan to create a
> newsgroup (espercially moderated ones).
>
> But the rest of totally out of control.
Control and usenet do not belong in the same sentance. In a perfect
world, they would, but in the real world, they simply don't.
> I don't agree with ISPs who decide to dump NNTP because "it is nothing
> but warez". They should instead simply carry legitimate newsgroups
> from the big 8 as well as other "managed" hiearchies.
Sure: You gonna pay their legal bills when someone successfully sues them
for copyright infringement or child porn related charges due to the fact
that the excersised editorial control over their feed ?
> If faces with total shutdown of NNTP, I would rather it survive in a
> more moderated/managed form so that the good bits would survive, even
> if it means that the true "free speech" aspect that allowed everyone
> and anyone to create any and all newsgroups they wanted would no
> longer be supported.
You are in a very, very tiny minority, then. (Basically, what you
describe is Yahoo groups, not Usenet)
Walter Dnes (delete the 'z' to get my real address)
> Outsourcing:
>
> Outsourcing is suited towards ISPs who do not have the infrastructure
> to setup and maintain a full newsfeed. Your users connect directly
> to our servers, saving bandwidth and server maintenance costs.
That is the wrong option. The "suck feed" option is probably the way
to go. Set up a caching server at your end, and get 4 x 100 kbyte/sec
feed ports for approximately what you're paying now. How would the
pricing look? You may have to do some traffic analysis. The key here
is that a dozen users downloading one very popular group would only be
charged as 1 download. If you could get by with 3 ports, you'd come out
ahead of the game.
> As you can tell we're probably better off staying with Giganews.
> This also shows us that most nntp service providers likely don't
> want ISPs as both Astraweb and Giganews seem to give better pricing
> on a per user basis (retail) than for ISPs....
CDN$4.00 per month would provide around 10 gigabytes, at astraweb's
retail rates. I don't understand why they charge more for your users
connecting direct to astraweb's servers. I could understand it for a
suck feed, where you could run a caching nntp server. In that case you
would pay only once for very popular groups, even if you have multiple
users using them. Oddly enough, suck feeds end up costing you less than
outsourcing.
The only rationale I can think of for the weird pricing is that an
ISP with hundreds or thousands of usenet users would have massive clout
to demand special rates if they threaten to take their business
elsewhere. Individual users don't have that kind of power.
JF Mezei
> You are in a very, very tiny minority, then. (Basically, what you
> describe is Yahoo groups, not Usenet)
Nop, there is quite a difference. Yahoo reserves the right to shutdown a
group if it feels the content is inappropriate.
I am just advocating that for a newsgroup to exist, it should have a
proper charter. This doesn't mean a right to censor content. Just a
requirement that the formation and maintenance of a group should be done
according to established process.
The problem outside the big 8 is that it is extremely easy to create any
group, but there is no process to clean up groups that are no longer
needed and used. A simple "heartbeat" mechanism whereby every couple of
years, a simple vote is taken to indicate users still want the
newsgroup.
This doesn't solve the issue of huge binary files generating lots of
bandwidth usage. But the lack of manageability of NNTP will only make
things worse.
Hong Kong is controlled anarchy. And of a piece of land isn't generating
revenus, they zap the building and build a new one. But on Usenet, they
just keep on expanding and not cleaning up messes.
Mike Tancsa
<dmagda+tr...@ee.ryerson.ca> wrote:
>Yo Ho Ho <N...@such.thing.com> writes:
>
>> I guess it must be bandwidth costs??
>
>While bandwidth is said to be generally dropping on a per bit basis,
People forget that while the price per megabit is dropping, you need
many more megabits to service the same group of customers. Given X
customers using Y Mb/s today, X customers will be using Y+Z Mb/s
tomorrow with Z constantly growing.
---Mike
--------------------------------------------------------
Mike Tancsa, Sentex communications http://www.sentex.net
Providing Internet Access since 1994
mi...@sentex.net, (http://www.tancsa.com)