*BSD News Article 72802


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From: Ken Bigelow <kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com>
Newsgroups: demon.ip.support,demon.tech.unix,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Batch FTP and Web Pages
Date: Thu, 04 Jul 1996 08:34:42 -0700
Organization: A poorly-installed InterNetNews site
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Message-ID: <31DBE492.34D2@www.play-hookey.com>
References: <31D4AA3A.BC0@www.play-hookey.com> <836073421snz@dsl.co.uk> <31D87436.7C7F@www.play-hookey.com> <836295557snz@dsl.co.uk> <4rcr6v$dh@anorak.coverform.lan>
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I'll respond to all three of Brian's posts here, since they're all 
related.

Brian Somers wrote:
> 
> 
> So, what you're saying is that demon - who recently were applying for
> another class B address space (about 65000 users currently?) have decided
> in their infinite wisdom to invest in a T3?  Well, bully for them.  Let's
> see, 45,000,000 bits / 65,000 users = 692 *bits* each.  Woooooffff !
> I'll get out there and start my 86 byte/sec download now !  Ok, maybe
> that's a bit unfair.  They havn't got the capacity to have everyone
> connected at once.  Let's say they allow 6000 of us in at once, what's
> that, about 937 bytes per second ?  In fact, this *wonderful* T3 will
> allow a staggering 1607 28.8k users to get max throughput.  I'd better
> rush home and get in there first.
> 
> The problem is that most of the decent sites are in the US (bar
> src.doc.ic.ac.uk which mirrors a lot of stuff) - certainly, most
> http pages will have links to places in the states - hell, FreeBSD's
> lynx has builtin links directly to it's home-site in the states
> (although they are configurable).  We at Demon have only *one* route
> to the states.  It should have been a T3 by mid 1994.
>
> .........there's nothing fundamentally wrong with staying connected
> except that demon do not have enough capacity to allow people to
> permanently tie up a modem.


Between postings and e-mail, we seem to have identified the bottleneck; 
even if one poster was correct and MCI has upgraded to 155 MB/s, it is 
still a serious limit, and won't get improved quickly. There is no problem 
at either end of the transAtlantic cable -- only with the bandwidth of the 
cable itself.

The only off-line method for transferring large files that I have been 
able to come up with has been as e-mail attachments. The ISPs in the UK 
apparently have no fixed limit at this time. Of course, if lots of big 
files get transferred this way they might start getting mad. But then, 
they might also figure that ftp capability would make their own lives 
easier.

I can only suggest that we do what we can with the technology we can use, 
and deal with the ire of ISPs when it happens. Who knows: maybe they'll be 
as shafted by overregulation as you users are!

-- 

Ken

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