"Try FTP-ing  something from anywhere  in Europe  to Germany and  you will
 understand immediately.  We're talking about  a dozen retries ..."
 
I act as the intermediary between the world Oracle network and the Internet,
FTP'ing a dozen images or so images a week on the average, from all over the
world, and while you're right, that FTP'ing on the Internet is slow, it is
not subject to failure. I've left large FTPs running all night w/o problems.
 
One thing worth noting is that while it may be busy here, on the daylight
side, it will be slack tide on the far side, traffic-wise. This can safely
be expected to be a pattern for the interminable future, independent of the
actual bandwidth constraints. It kind of evens out, it's always slow doing
business internationally, especially when you're verifying packet contents
and doing checksums and the like.
 
 
" ... and each time over a hundred keystrokes."
 
Cut and paste.
 
 
"When I don't know what I'm talking about, I either check my facts or keep
 quiet, to avoid embarassing myself in public with erroneous statements."
 
I venture my opinion in the hopes that I will learn from my mistakes, myself.
 
It's much faster than the 'preserve-one's-facade-of-universal-competence-at-
all-costs' school of thought.
 
 
"And it's not even written in C or OOPS/CASE. I'm sure your users are very
 concerned about  the model  followed by  BITNET and  its popularity  in a
 certain category of "executive-oriented" magazines."
 
That's true, before it moves to Unix - and it will, it is - it'll have to
be rewritten.
 
I see no call for spurious insults of unknown user communities, Eric Thomas.
We are all bound by the whims of our user communities, to some degree.
 
 
-- richard
 
=====
-- richard childers		[log in to unmask]		1 415 506 2411
         oracle data center  --  unix systems & network administration
 
                    Klein flask for rent. Inquire within.