On Sat, 25 Apr 1992 12:12:12 PDT you said:
>How the limousine can be "days" faster than the bus on the **same**
>(since your BITNET link is actually a BITNET-over-Internet link) road
>is a question which I can't answer!
 
One possibility is that however connected, BITNET depends on RSCS which
just doesn't seem all that reliable.  Our BITNET II link to YaleVM
(piggybacked on the Internet link) is down MUCH less than our BITNET
only link used to be (it's also a great deal faster so a queue between
Yale and here also is a thing of the past except immediately after
reconnecting RSCS).  However, it DOES crash from time to time, and when
it does (even during normal business hours when the appropriate techs
and gurus presumably are at work), it may be the better part of a day
(hours) before service is restored.
 
One trick, I've found is that I can send Internet mail to Yale's user
services when the BITNET link is not connected (on those occassions when
the problem requires more than bringing the problem to the attention of
the local operator).  That is, since we established an Internet link
last July, I have not noticed a time when I couldn't contact Yale by
TCP/IP (possibly by a route other than directly from here to there).
There have been times when I can't reach Yale by RSCS.
 
On those occasions when I have observed RSCS down, it is usually known to
the operators both here and at Yale.  Evidently, keeping RSCS running is
non-trivial (else it typically would have been fixed before I noticed that
a problem existed - when suddenly there's a queue of 1000+ files, that's
a clue as to how long it took to restore the connection).