In article ,
Bay Area Dave wrote:
There were approximately 11 MILLION messages posted in the last 30 days.
How does that square with your ISP's comments? IT DOESN'T!! Perhaps
they are shirking their duties as "providers" with less than stellar
support of the NG's.
dave
*snork* 11 million messages in 30 days is a drop in the bucket. A *full*
newsfeed these days (circa 45,000 newsgroups) requires most of the bandwidth
of a dedicated T-3 circuit, 24 hrs/day. That is 45 mbit/sec, or 9 Mbyte/sec.
The full feed is probably only about 600 *GIGABYTES* of traffic _per_day_.
Well over 90% of that traffic is in the 'alt.binaries.*' hierarchy -- the
vast majority of which is "dirty pictures", stolen computer software, etc.
5-10 _million_ MESSAGES PER DAY, *just* in 'alt.binaries.*' hierarchy, is
probably realistic, And _at_least_as_many_more_ for the rest of USENET.
Those who do 'know about' USENET tend to use it fairly heavily. Those who
"don't know" about it, _don't_use_it_ (oddly enough!
Those who "don't know" outnumber those who "do know", by a ratio that is
probably 'in the _thousands_' to one, if not higher.
Statistic: My provider has around a million customers. at _peak_times_
there are a couple of _hundred_ connections active to the news server.
in the middle of the night, that number is around a -dozen-.
Tom Watson wrote:
I read someone's comment the other day about how their ISP claimed
that "no one uses newsgroups anymore."
My own ISP has made the same comment to me when I've called to
complain about inadequate Newsgroup service. They seem to feel that
their customer base uses Usenet in only a marginal fashion. They act
as though they couldn't be bothered.
This newsgroup, in particular, seems to be vibrant and well
subscribed. The chess newgroups that I lurk on seem to be in the same
condition.
When I look at the Netscan statistics, I see signs that there are many
active groups.
Why this attitude by the ISP's?
I use two newsgroup providers, TeraNews being my backup, because my
ISP's provider is often out of whack. TeraNews is fine for a backup
but is often down.
However, I've had complaints from some that they don't see my posts
when they come through my ISP's provider (Voicenet, I believe) because
their system does not pick up the posts.
I've tried reading the group through Google but it seems to have a lot
of lag time between the time that posts are made and when they show up
on Google.
What is going on with this Usenet thing? Are the ISP's right in
claiming that Usenet is dying? And, given that the ISP's don't care,
what is the most reliable way to read and post on Usenet?
Regards, Tom
Thomas J. Watson-Cabinetmaker
Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania
http://users.snip.net/~tjwatson