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	Mon, 21 Apr 1997 08:34:47 +0800 (WST)
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 08:34:46 +0800 (WST)
From: Adrian Chadd <adrian@obiwan.psinet.net.au>
To: Steve <shovey@buffnet.net>
cc: Mike Tancsa <mike@sentex.net>, Michael Dillon <michael@memra.com>,
        freebsd-isp@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: How many customers read news (was Re: News...)
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> 
> > >But the percentage of customers who look at USENET is small and dropping.
> > 
> > Not on our system... At peak times, we have about 25% of our customers who
> > are currently online reading news.  To me thats a pretty significant
> > portion...

*WHAT* are they reading though?
Thats the problem.

> 
> When we started, if news was down, 3/4ths of the lines would go empty.
> Now when news is down, about 5 guys notice.

News over here (well at least with my ISP) is pretty popular..
however I'm scared to ask my news provider exactly WHAT our clients are
pulling. :)

Its kinda the same as shell access - we have about 5 or 6 shell users, and
a shell box serial limited to 38400. They *STILL* managed to pull down
about 3000-3500$ a month in IP traffic outside our "free traffic zone".
When the shell box HDD "failed", our link utilization went WAY down.

Someone should grab most-read-group stats from the news logs and post them
here, out of interest.

(Now the shell box is at 19200, I really want to drop it :)

I honestly don't care what access we give our clients, as long as :

a) Its not illegal *AT ALL*, or at least we can not be held responsible
   in any way for that.

b) The costs of running it are paid for by the clients.

Again, (a) is pretty easily understood, (b) however is tricky - here its
the "90% of the clients subsidise 10% of the clients". And although I
can't really stop that, I want to try to minimalise it.


Adrian