On Fri, 20 Nov 1992 00:37:26 EST Alexander Dupuy
<[log in to unmask]> said:
>I'm not sure exactly what "resources" you are comparing when you say
>that BITNET uses an order of magnitude less to distribute messages (and
>it's not clear whether you are comparing BITNET to Internet SMTP,
>Internet NNTP, or something else). My feeling is that any comparison of
>"resources" will be a case of apples and oranges, especially when
>comparing networks as different as BITNET and Internet.
I couldn't agree more, but I hope you realize this is a 180 turn from
your previous statements I was commenting on:
>>Even if you could split the INTERBIT load up a bit, it would still be a
>>tremendous waste of resources to be sending all those copies of mail.
>>Netnews was designed for exactly these sorts of hugely popular
>>discussion groups, and is very efficient at getting copies of many
>>messages to thousands of subscribers.
And my reply was that if you want to talk bandwidth or resources in
general, then let's talk bandwidth/resources, and the conclusion is that
a usenet group with only 10k subscribers is a waste of resources and
bandwidth due to the tremendous amount of hosts which will get
information they are not interested in, batched or not batched.
>The only people who can adequately judge that are the administrators of
>the INTERBIT MAILER in question.
Which you will recall is exactly what I said - it is for UB to decide.
>I'm sorry if the existence of a different (and somewhat incompatible)
>implementation of LISTSERV bothers you.
You got it wrong. I have no problem with the existence of 200 unix list
managers, as long as they don't call themselves 'unix listserv version
x.y' and don't claim in their documentation to be a 'port of the bitnet
listserver'. How do you think I feel when users start reporting bugs they
found on these servers to *me*, and then insulting me for having made
such a low-quality port to unix, probably because I don't like unix? At
first I kindly asked the developers of such servers to change the name to
avoid user confusion, but since the most polite answers I got was "No
way." I quickly gave up.
>Given a list split and gatewayed between BITNET and Internet, there are
>advantages for the subscribers on both networks. The first advantage
>(and the reason I suggested it in the beginning) is that the INTERBIT
>mail gateway only has to expand one address, and the peered Unix
>LISTSERVs can spread the mail load amongst themselves more easily than
>appears to be the case with BITNET LISTSERV and the INTERBIT gateways.
And you're the one complaining about apple vs orange comparisons? Give me
a break. Of course a peered unix list is more parallel than a non-peered
BITNET list, but what makes you think the same thing can't be done just
as easily by peering the lists between BITNET LISTSERV's? In addition,
this would keep the "single logical list" vision and automatically send
new subscribers off to the best site.
>But there are other reasons why people on the Internet might prefer to
>subscribe to the Internet half of a mailing list.
Then how come people on the Internet aren't asking for the 3500 existing
BITNET lists to be split in this fashion for their convenience? Try
reviewing your average BITNET list (not one devoted to a particular piece
of BITNET software, but a typical discussion group) and counting the
BITNET vs Internet addresses. It seems Internet subscribers are a clear
majority. If they liked the unix list servers so much, they would start a
revolution and move all the lists to unix - wouldn't they?
>Other, less visible, features could include better support for future
>Internet mail standards than might be available on the INTERBIT
>gateways.
Well I am surprised to see you stooping to the level of your average US
election campaign.
>I believe that both implementations of LISTSERV support mail
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is exactly the kind of statement that I object to. The software you
are using is NOT an implementation of LISTSERV. It isn't compatible, it
cannot connect to LISTSERV as a peer, it just does about the same sort of
things. Internet people normally say "implementation of X" only when they
have a piece of software which complies to some RFC or other standard;
however they seem to make an exception for LISTSERV.
Eric
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