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Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 18:52:54 -0400
From: Sysadmin <danlaw@rust.net>
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To: Robin Melville <robmel@nadt.org.uk>
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Subject: Re: News...
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Robin Melville wrote:
> 
> Dropping news once it has arrived seems to me to beg the question. If you
> check the proportion of news that you stash that is actually accessed by
> users it turns out to be a small proportion of the total (unless you're a
> <huge> ISP).
>
> The rest has occupied great hunks of bandwidth to arrive at your system, and
> everybody else's, and is then thrown away at the end of the expiry cycle.
> Since news is now such a grotesquely inefficient bandwidth gobbler, it's
> surely time to reevaluate the whole system.
> 
> I suppose two possibilities come to mind... 1) I like the idea of the
> Pagesat satellite news feed system in that it is effectively multicast and
> removes the multiple transmission of the same stuff around the Net; 2) a
> smaller number of passive news repositories responding to local ISP cacheing
> news server requests -- only the news that's required gets d/l.
> 
> Just my two-pennyworth :)
That would be Planet Connect, now.  Pagesat is evidently defunct. Lesee,
for US customers $1090+$33/month (1 yr contract).  For Europe $988 and
you 
supply the satellite dish and LNB yourself, plus $50/month (VAT & such, 
perhaps?)  For 128K feed of Usenet only, H/W expandable to 256K.
According
to their website.