In message o.uk, at
01:45:33 on Fri, 26 Dec 2014, Dave Liquorice
remarked:
Not 'goods' at all. the change only applies to services to include
ebook, software and music downloads.

This raises another question, does this change really apply to NIN?

I'm not buying an eBook nor software nor music. I'm buying access to
a server, that server could be anywhere. Maybe they have been told
that they do come under this change and are arguing that they don't?

You are buying a year's worth of delivery of Usenet articles.

One of the ways around this would be for someone in the UK to do a B2B
deal with NIN to feed a Usenet server in the UK, and then sell
individual 'tenner a year' subscriptions to UK people; up to 8,100 of
them anyway.
--
Roland Perry

"Roland Perry" wrote in message ...

In message o.uk, at
01:45:33 on Fri, 26 Dec 2014, Dave Liquorice
remarked:
Not 'goods' at all. the change only applies to services to include
ebook, software and music downloads.

This raises another question, does this change really apply to NIN?

I'm not buying an eBook nor software nor music. I'm buying access to
a server, that server could be anywhere. Maybe they have been told
that they do come under this change and are arguing that they don't?

You are buying a year's worth of delivery of Usenet articles.

One of the ways around this would be for someone in the UK to do a B2B
deal with NIN to feed a Usenet server in the UK, and then sell
individual 'tenner a year' subscriptions to UK people; up to 8,100 of
them anyway.
================================================== =============
If your figure of 8,100 people is because of the £81,000 turnover threshold
for VAT registration, that doesn't apply. The threshold for this scheme is
zero.

http://news.ansible.uk/a329.html#33

--
Gordon Davie
Edinburgh, Scotland

"GordonD" wrote in message
...
"Roland Perry" wrote in message ...

In message o.uk, at
01:45:33 on Fri, 26 Dec 2014, Dave Liquorice
remarked:
Not 'goods' at all. the change only applies to services to include
ebook, software and music downloads.

This raises another question, does this change really apply to NIN?

I'm not buying an eBook nor software nor music. I'm buying access to
a server, that server could be anywhere. Maybe they have been told
that they do come under this change and are arguing that they don't?

You are buying a year's worth of delivery of Usenet articles.

One of the ways around this would be for someone in the UK to do a B2B
deal with NIN to feed a Usenet server in the UK, and then sell
individual 'tenner a year' subscriptions to UK people; up to 8,100 of
them anyway.
================================================== =============
If your figure of 8,100 people is because of the £81,000 turnover
threshold for VAT registration, that doesn't apply. The threshold for this
scheme is zero.

only if "your" purchasers are in a foreign country

if you are a UK company offering "download" services only to UK recipients,
then the UK limit applies

tim

On Fri, 26 Dec 2014 13:29:18 +0000, GordonD wrote:

"Roland Perry" wrote in message ...

In message o.uk, at
01:45:33 on Fri, 26 Dec 2014, Dave Liquorice
remarked:
Not 'goods' at all. the change only applies to services to include
ebook, software and music downloads.

This raises another question, does this change really apply to NIN?

I'm not buying an eBook nor software nor music. I'm buying access to a
server, that server could be anywhere. Maybe they have been told that
they do come under this change and are arguing that they don't?

You are buying a year's worth of delivery of Usenet articles.

One of the ways around this would be for someone in the UK to do a B2B
deal with NIN to feed a Usenet server in the UK, and then sell
individual 'tenner a year' subscriptions to UK people; up to 8,100 of
them anyway.
================================================== =============
If your figure of 8,100 people is because of the £81,000 turnover
threshold for VAT registration, that doesn't apply. The threshold for
this scheme is zero.

No, you miss the point. It would be sold by a UK reseller.

--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

In uk.railway Roland Perry wrote:
You are buying a year's worth of delivery of Usenet articles.

Either that, or a year's 'software service'.

One of the ways around this would be for someone in the UK to do a B2B
deal with NIN to feed a Usenet server in the UK, and then sell
individual 'tenner a year' subscriptions to UK people; up to 8,100 of
them anyway.

What's special about NIN? It's a feed of Usenet articles, that runs
Cleanfeed to remove the spam. And? We could just set up a text-only Usenet
server that lives in the UK and do the same. Hosting is almost at
beer-tokens level these days (a 20 quid a month VPS would do it), so chuck a
few pennies in the pot and its sorted. Likewise settling up INN is a bit
arcane and tedious, but when it's done it's done.

Or you could just use a server someone else has set up, or which there are
numerous.

But the point is there's no massive day-to-day effort in running a Usenet
server, so I don't see what's special about jumping over backwards to keep
NIN when there are perfectly good alternatives available.

Theo

Theo Markettos wrote:

What's special about NIN?

Reliable, and as it's run by a TU's computer centre, very likely to continue
to work.


But the point is there's no massive day-to-day effort in running a Usenet
server

- which makes it all the more annoying that various ISPs couldn't do it
reliably, and then stopped for good.

--
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.

Email sent to my from-address will be deleted. Instead, please reply
to replacing "aaa" by "284".

"Theo Markettos" wrote in message
...
In uk.railway Roland Perry wrote:
You are buying a year's worth of delivery of Usenet articles.



But the point is there's no massive day-to-day effort in running a Usenet
server,

So that'll be why ISP after ISP are deciding that it isn't worth the bother,
won't it

tim

"Bob Eager" wrote in message ...

On Fri, 26 Dec 2014 13:29:18 +0000, GordonD wrote:

If your figure of 8,100 people is because of the £81,000 turnover
threshold for VAT registration, that doesn't apply. The threshold for
this scheme is zero.

No, you miss the point. It would be sold by a UK reseller.

Yes, with you now.
--
Gordon Davie
Edinburgh, Scotland

In message , at 13:29:18 on Fri, 26
Dec 2014, GordonD remarked:
One of the ways around this would be for someone in the UK to do a B2B
deal with NIN to feed a Usenet server in the UK, and then sell
individual 'tenner a year' subscriptions to UK people; up to 8,100 of
them anyway.
================================================= ==============
If your figure of 8,100 people is because of the £81,000 turnover
threshold for VAT registration, that doesn't apply. The threshold for
this scheme is zero.

The person setting up the server in the UK will only have UK
subscribers. The threshold is therefore £81k.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 17:26:39 on Fri,
26 Dec 2014, Theo Markettos
remarked:

One of the ways around this would be for someone in the UK to do a B2B
deal with NIN to feed a Usenet server in the UK, and then sell
individual 'tenner a year' subscriptions to UK people; up to 8,100 of
them anyway.

What's special about NIN? It's a feed of Usenet articles, that runs
Cleanfeed to remove the spam. And? We could just set up a text-only Usenet
server that lives in the UK and do the same. Hosting is almost at
beer-tokens level these days (a 20 quid a month VPS would do it), so chuck a
few pennies in the pot and its sorted. Likewise settling up INN is a bit
arcane and tedious, but when it's done it's done.

Or you could just use a server someone else has set up, or which there are
numerous.

But the point is there's no massive day-to-day effort in running a Usenet
server,

I'm quite sure you are significantly underestimating the effort
required.

so I don't see what's special about jumping over backwards to keep
NIN when there are perfectly good alternatives available.

Which one would you suggest.
--
Roland Perry

On Fri, 26 Dec 2014 17:26:39 +0000, Theo Markettos wrote:

In uk.railway Roland Perry wrote:
You are buying a year's worth of delivery of Usenet articles.

Either that, or a year's 'software service'.

One of the ways around this would be for someone in the UK to do a B2B
deal with NIN to feed a Usenet server in the UK, and then sell
individual 'tenner a year' subscriptions to UK people; up to 8,100 of
them anyway.

What's special about NIN? It's a feed of Usenet articles, that runs
Cleanfeed to remove the spam. And? We could just set up a text-only
Usenet server that lives in the UK and do the same. Hosting is almost
at beer-tokens level these days (a 20 quid a month VPS would do it), so
chuck a few pennies in the pot and its sorted. Likewise settling up INN
is a bit arcane and tedious, but when it's done it's done.

Or you could just use a server someone else has set up, or which there
are numerous.

But the point is there's no massive day-to-day effort in running a
Usenet server, so I don't see what's special about jumping over
backwards to keep NIN when there are perfectly good alternatives
available.

Have ypu ever run one?



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

On Fri, 26 Dec 2014 18:30:53 +0000, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 17:26:39 on Fri,
26 Dec 2014, Theo Markettos
remarked:

One of the ways around this would be for someone in the UK to do a B2B
deal with NIN to feed a Usenet server in the UK, and then sell
individual 'tenner a year' subscriptions to UK people; up to 8,100 of
them anyway.

What's special about NIN? It's a feed of Usenet articles, that runs
Cleanfeed to remove the spam. And? We could just set up a text-only
Usenet server that lives in the UK and do the same. Hosting is almost
at beer-tokens level these days (a 20 quid a month VPS would do it), so
chuck a few pennies in the pot and its sorted. Likewise settling up INN
is a bit arcane and tedious, but when it's done it's done.

Or you could just use a server someone else has set up, or which there
are numerous.

But the point is there's no massive day-to-day effort in running a
Usenet server,

I'm quite sure you are significantly underestimating the effort
required.

I'm quite sure you're right. I ranm an in-house one with relatively few
users and newsgroups (and no spam filtering) and that was bad enough.



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

On Fri, 26 Dec 2014 17:58:53 -0000, tim..... wrote:

But the point is there's no massive day-to-day effort in running a

Usenet server,

Well FSVO "running a Usenet server" I'll agree, I do, it just works
but it's only serving me on my LAN with half a dozen groups. Very
different taking a full, text only,feed and serving it to customers.

So that'll be why ISP after ISP are deciding that it isn't worth the
bother, won't it

I think that is more down to the fact it does cost the some money and
man power but they can't plaster NNTP with ads or harvest saleable
"user data" to recover some of those costs.

--
Cheers
Dave.

In uk.railway Bob Eager wrote:
On Fri, 26 Dec 2014 17:26:39 +0000, Theo Markettos wrote:

But the point is there's no massive day-to-day effort in running a
Usenet server, so I don't see what's special about jumping over
backwards to keep NIN when there are perfectly good alternatives
available.

Have ypu ever run one?

No, but I know people who do. It was somewhat fiddly to set up, not a vast
day to day effort AFAIK. Don't take binary groups so the bandwidth is
manageable, Cleanfeed makes dealing with spam fairly painless, set it to
handle signed newgroups/rmgroups automatically, and just leave it running.
For ease of maintenance perhaps ignore all requests to add new groups in
hierarchies that don't use signed control messages. Just give it enough
disc and bandwidth and let it get on with it.

I'd like to have a go at some point, but my todo list of other projects is
already quite long, so not likely to happen imminently.

AIUI the main issue with ISPs running newsservers is that 0.01% of customers
use them, so even one hour of management time costs more than the potential
'profit' to the ISP. The economics are somewhat different if it's a free
hobby service run on a best-effort, get-what-you-pay-for service. If you
make people pay for it they'll come with flaming pitchforks demanding you
fix problems right now, which is why the fee has to be sufficiently high to
cover employing someone, as well as the transaction costs of people giving
you money (which is where we came in). Take the money out of the equation
and life becomes a lot simpler.

Theo

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
ll.co.uk...
On Fri, 26 Dec 2014 17:58:53 -0000, tim..... wrote:

But the point is there's no massive day-to-day effort in running a

Usenet server,

Well FSVO "running a Usenet server" I'll agree, I do, it just works
but it's only serving me on my LAN with half a dozen groups. Very
different taking a full, text only,feed and serving it to customers.

So that'll be why ISP after ISP are deciding that it isn't worth the
bother, won't it

I think that is more down to the fact it does cost the some money and
man power but they can't plaster NNTP with ads or harvest saleable
"user data" to recover some of those costs.

I don't. I know that one of the ISPs that I did use did have their
news server fall over and so it isnt as easy as it looks to keep it up.

"Theo Markettos" wrote in message
...
In uk.railway Bob Eager wrote:
On Fri, 26 Dec 2014 17:26:39 +0000, Theo Markettos wrote:

But the point is there's no massive day-to-day effort in running a
Usenet server, so I don't see what's special about jumping over
backwards to keep NIN when there are perfectly good alternatives
available.

Have ypu ever run one?

No, but I know people who do. It was somewhat fiddly to set up, not a
vast
day to day effort AFAIK. Don't take binary groups so the bandwidth is
manageable, Cleanfeed makes dealing with spam fairly painless, set it to
handle signed newgroups/rmgroups automatically, and just leave it running.
For ease of maintenance perhaps ignore all requests to add new groups in
hierarchies that don't use signed control messages. Just give it enough
disc and bandwidth and let it get on with it.

Must explain why not one of the free ones ever have it fall over.

I'd like to have a go at some point, but my todo list of other projects is
already quite long, so not likely to happen imminently.

AIUI the main issue with ISPs running newsservers is that 0.01% of
customers
use them, so even one hour of management time costs more than the
potential
'profit' to the ISP. The economics are somewhat different if it's a free
hobby service run on a best-effort, get-what-you-pay-for service. If you
make people pay for it they'll come with flaming pitchforks demanding you
fix problems right now, which is why the fee has to be sufficiently high
to
cover employing someone, as well as the transaction costs of people giving
you money (which is where we came in). Take the money out of the equation
and life becomes a lot simpler.

NIN clearly disagrees on that too.

On Fri, 26 Dec 2014 13:43:55 -0000, "tim....."
wrote:


"GordonD" wrote in message
...
"Roland Perry" wrote in message ...

In message o.uk, at
01:45:33 on Fri, 26 Dec 2014, Dave Liquorice
remarked:
Not 'goods' at all. the change only applies to services to include
ebook, software and music downloads.

This raises another question, does this change really apply to NIN?

I'm not buying an eBook nor software nor music. I'm buying access to
a server, that server could be anywhere. Maybe they have been told
that they do come under this change and are arguing that they don't?

You are buying a year's worth of delivery of Usenet articles.

One of the ways around this would be for someone in the UK to do a B2B
deal with NIN to feed a Usenet server in the UK, and then sell
individual 'tenner a year' subscriptions to UK people; up to 8,100 of
them anyway.
================================================== =============
If your figure of 8,100 people is because of the £81,000 turnover
threshold for VAT registration, that doesn't apply. The threshold for this
scheme is zero.

only if "your" purchasers are in a foreign country

if you are a UK company offering "download" services only to UK recipients,
then the UK limit applies

Wasn't one of the difficulties proving the location of the recipient ?

On Fri, 26 Dec 2014 22:52:08 +0000, Theo Markettos wrote:

In uk.railway Bob Eager wrote:
On Fri, 26 Dec 2014 17:26:39 +0000, Theo Markettos wrote:

But the point is there's no massive day-to-day effort in running a
Usenet server, so I don't see what's special about jumping over
backwards to keep NIN when there are perfectly good alternatives
available.

Have ypu ever run one?

No, but I know people who do. It was somewhat fiddly to set up, not a
vast day to day effort AFAIK. Don't take binary groups so the bandwidth
is manageable, Cleanfeed makes dealing with spam fairly painless, set it
to handle signed newgroups/rmgroups automatically, and just leave it
running. For ease of maintenance perhaps ignore all requests to add new
groups in hierarchies that don't use signed control messages. Just give
it enough disc and bandwidth and let it get on with it.

I'd like to have a go at some point, but my todo list of other projects
is already quite long, so not likely to happen imminently.

I do hope you find time, and experience the reality.

--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

In message , at 03:12:40 on
Sat, 27 Dec 2014, Charles Ellson remarked:
if you are a UK company offering "download" services only to UK recipients,
then the UK limit applies

Wasn't one of the difficulties proving the location of the recipient ?

It is, but if making digital supplies in your own country also requires
the two independent sources of residential data, joining MOSS or
whatever, then this puts the change into a completely different league.

To quote one firm of accountants:

"Suppliers who choose not to register under MOSS will be required to
register for VAT in any Member State where they make a a supply of TBES
services to consumers".

The UK is "any member state", but HMRC's guidance talks about "You must
use [MOSS for] supplies to consumers in member states where you're not
established".

I'm therefore concluding that the £81k exemption would continue for
supplies to the UK.
--
Roland Perry

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
ll.co.uk...
On Fri, 26 Dec 2014 17:58:53 -0000, tim..... wrote:

But the point is there's no massive day-to-day effort in running a

Usenet server,


as this group has a history of complaining when my new reader doesn't
attribute properly (not my fault at all)
I feel the need to complain when someone else snips incorrectly - which is
entirely their fault

I didn't write a word of the above attributed to me!

LEARN TO SNIP PROPERLY!!!!!


Well FSVO "running a Usenet server" I'll agree, I do, it just works
but it's only serving me on my LAN with half a dozen groups. Very
different taking a full, text only,feed and serving it to customers.

So that'll be why ISP after ISP are deciding that it isn't worth the
bother, won't it

I think that is more down to the fact it does cost the some money and
man power but they can't plaster NNTP with ads or harvest saleable
"user data" to recover some of those costs.

--
Cheers
Dave.

"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...


"Theo Markettos" wrote in message
...
In uk.railway Bob Eager wrote:
On Fri, 26 Dec 2014 17:26:39 +0000, Theo Markettos wrote:

But the point is there's no massive day-to-day effort in running a
Usenet server, so I don't see what's special about jumping over
backwards to keep NIN when there are perfectly good alternatives
available.

Have ypu ever run one?

No, but I know people who do. It was somewhat fiddly to set up, not a
vast
day to day effort AFAIK. Don't take binary groups so the bandwidth is
manageable, Cleanfeed makes dealing with spam fairly painless, set it to
handle signed newgroups/rmgroups automatically, and just leave it
running.
For ease of maintenance perhaps ignore all requests to add new groups in
hierarchies that don't use signed control messages. Just give it enough
disc and bandwidth and let it get on with it.

Must explain why not one of the free ones ever have it fall over.

I'd like to have a go at some point, but my todo list of other projects
is
already quite long, so not likely to happen imminently.

AIUI the main issue with ISPs running newsservers is that 0.01% of
customers
use them, so even one hour of management time costs more than the
potential
'profit' to the ISP. The economics are somewhat different if it's a free
hobby service run on a best-effort, get-what-you-pay-for service. If you
make people pay for it they'll come with flaming pitchforks demanding you
fix problems right now, which is why the fee has to be sufficiently high
to
cover employing someone, as well as the transaction costs of people
giving
you money (which is where we came in). Take the money out of the
equation
and life becomes a lot simpler.

NIN clearly disagrees on that too.

NIN only put in the charge as a gateway to stop spammers creating multiple
accounts

I don't think they see it as an exercise in covering any costs (except those
of colleting the fee)

tim..... wrote



So that'll be why ISP after ISP are deciding that it isn't worth the bother,
won't it


Most dropped Usenet because of the constant complaints they received,
their petty rules didn't help matters either.

In message sting.com,
at 12:30:50 on Sat, 27 Dec 2014, Sailor remarked:
So that'll be why ISP after ISP are deciding that it isn't worth the bother,
won't it

Most dropped Usenet because of the constant complaints they received,

Why would a home-brew replacement not attract a similar number of
complaints? Or s the business plan to ignore complaints?

their petty rules didn't help matters either.

Such a bind having to join the IWF and take down child abuse images.
--
Roland Perry

"tim....." wrote:

as this group has a history of complaining

Which group?

when my new reader doesn't attribute properly (not my fault at all)

Of course it's your fault. Either get a proper newsreader or manually
correct the text.

I feel the need to complain when someone else snips incorrectly

Since we're complaining, I feel the need to complain about this thread
which is crossposted all over the place and is off-topic in all the
groups in which it appears. I'm reading in uk.telecom so please remove
it from the groups line or take the discussion to a more appropriate
group.

[followups set]

"tim....." wrote in message
...

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
ll.co.uk...
On Fri, 26 Dec 2014 17:58:53 -0000, tim..... wrote:

But the point is there's no massive day-to-day effort in running a

Usenet server,


as this group has a history of complaining when my new reader doesn't
attribute properly (not my fault at all)
I feel the need to complain when someone else snips incorrectly - which is
entirely their fault

I didn't write a word of the above attributed to me!

It isnt attributed to you. Count the s, stupid.

LEARN TO SNIP PROPERLY!!!!!

LEARN TO READ ATTRIBUTIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well FSVO "running a Usenet server" I'll agree, I do, it just works
but it's only serving me on my LAN with half a dozen groups. Very
different taking a full, text only,feed and serving it to customers.

So that'll be why ISP after ISP are deciding that it isn't worth the
bother, won't it

I think that is more down to the fact it does cost the some money and
man power but they can't plaster NNTP with ads or harvest saleable
"user data" to recover some of those costs.

"tim....." wrote in message
...

"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...


"Theo Markettos" wrote in message
...
In uk.railway Bob Eager wrote:
On Fri, 26 Dec 2014 17:26:39 +0000, Theo Markettos wrote:

But the point is there's no massive day-to-day effort in running a
Usenet server, so I don't see what's special about jumping over
backwards to keep NIN when there are perfectly good alternatives
available.

Have ypu ever run one?

No, but I know people who do. It was somewhat fiddly to set up, not a
vast
day to day effort AFAIK. Don't take binary groups so the bandwidth is
manageable, Cleanfeed makes dealing with spam fairly painless, set it to
handle signed newgroups/rmgroups automatically, and just leave it
running.
For ease of maintenance perhaps ignore all requests to add new groups in
hierarchies that don't use signed control messages. Just give it enough
disc and bandwidth and let it get on with it.

Must explain why not one of the free ones ever have it fall over.

I'd like to have a go at some point, but my todo list of other projects
is
already quite long, so not likely to happen imminently.

AIUI the main issue with ISPs running newsservers is that 0.01% of
customers
use them, so even one hour of management time costs more than the
potential
'profit' to the ISP. The economics are somewhat different if it's a
free
hobby service run on a best-effort, get-what-you-pay-for service. If
you
make people pay for it they'll come with flaming pitchforks demanding
you
fix problems right now, which is why the fee has to be sufficiently high
to
cover employing someone, as well as the transaction costs of people
giving
you money (which is where we came in). Take the money out of the
equation
and life becomes a lot simpler.

NIN clearly disagrees on that too.

NIN only put in the charge as a gateway to stop spammers creating multiple
accounts

Bull****. They say explicitly why they started charging.

I don't think they see it as an exercise in covering any costs (except
those of colleting the fee)

It doesn’t cost them anything like €10 to collect the fee.

"Sailor" wrote in message
ldhosting.com...
tim..... wrote



So that'll be why ISP after ISP are deciding that it isn't worth the
bother,
won't it


Most dropped Usenet because of the constant complaints they received,

I don't believe that. Most dropped usenet because they
realised that **** all of their users even knew what it was, let
alone used it, and its non trivial to provide a viable service.

their petty rules didn't help matters either.

In uk.railway Bob Eager wrote:
I do hope you find time, and experience the reality.

So what's the major time sink then?

FTAOD I'm talking about a radically slimmed-down service with:

No binaries. A lot of the cesspit of Usenet comes from binaries, not only
illegal content but silly things like people using Usenet as 'backup' -
encrypt your files, throw them at Usenet, get other people to pay for
hosting them. In essence binary-Usenet is a completely different beast:
it's a filesharing network that happens to use the same protocol, but its
demands on infrastructure are substantially different.

Cleanfeed gets rid of a lot of spam, excessive crossposting, strips
remaining binaries etc. It's a bit like SpamAssassin for Usenet. We use
it, it works.

The server basically runs on automatic, that means no user support, no
manual adding of newsgroups, generally all the manual tasks are minimised by
declaring we don't support them. That's not a proposition everyone will
like, but what I'm outlining here is a no-frills low-maintenance service.
It's much easier to provide such a service if you don't charge for it,
because there's no billing, no user management, and people can't moan about
not getting their money's worth.

Dealing with user abuse is a potential problem that I don't have a handle
on: to some extent controls like 'only 25 posts per IP per day' can minimise
that, but I don't know the size of the remaining problem.


Technically, Usenet is a 1990s-era service with declining traffic running on
2014 hardware and networks. Usenet used to be a firehose of traffic,
but by today's standards it's quite moderate once you remove binaries from
the picture. That means the demands are relatively modest: there isn't a
scaling problem, because we used INN on Solaris boxes in the 1990s to run
Usenet servers with 1990s traffic volumes - volumes have gone down since
then but hardware has got much faster. Possibly the number of clients of an
internet-wide NNTP server are more than the typical ISP server of the 1990s
- but I suspect being overwhelmed by demand for Usenet is problem we'd
dearly love to have.

I realise INN isn't the friendliest software in the world, but that seems to
be mostly in setup costs rather than day-to-day running once you've got it
right.


But, of course, I haven't run a server. So I'm interested in what the
challenges actually are.

Theo

On 28/12/2014 11:43, Theo Markettos wrote:
Technically, Usenet is a 1990s-era service with declining traffic running on
2014 hardware and networks.

So what has the volume of Usenet traffic (excluding binaries) over the
years actually been?

When I first used Usenet, I was on dial-up with dreadful service and the
servers had very short retention. I would often only download the posts
that looked interesting.

I am now on a more-or-less decent connection and the servers have much
better retention (some very much more than others). I download
everything on most of the groups I am interested in. I can also access
Usenet on several machines - indeed, many of us have considerably more
machines on which we might want Usenet access than we used to.

I would not be at all surprised if my traffic had increased considerably
over the years.

--
Rod

In message , at 12:51:24 on Sun, 28
Dec 2014, polygonum remarked:
Technically, Usenet is a 1990s-era service with declining traffic running on
2014 hardware and networks.

So what has the volume of Usenet traffic (excluding binaries) over the
years actually been?

If you exclude binaries, not that much. But even with selected binaries
[eg excluding anything with warez or sex in the name] 20 years ago it
was probably the biggest bandwidth hog. And hence why ISPs restricted
their news service to customers "on-net", so that their connection to
the Internet Cloud only ever had to pass one copy of every article (even
if multiple copies were then delivered internal to their network).
--
Roland Perry

On 26/12/14 21:04, Bob Eager wrote:

Have ypu ever run one?


I have - the Imperial College DoC one (when they still had one) in the
early 00's

It was an absolute PITA - because, even on automatic, it consumed insane
amounts of bandwidth just taking articles from its JANET peer.

Its disk would fill up from time to time and it would need periodic
intervention.

We did not have the benefit of cleanfeed, but we basically had it on
"auto" with reasonable settings using innd - no binaries, no
autocreation outside of predefined sensible hierarchies (no that limited
the alt.********.********.adinfinitum... problems.

And we were only serving clients from our own userbase.

On 28/12/2014 13:17, Huge wrote:
On 2014-12-28, polygonum wrote:
On 28/12/2014 11:43, Theo Markettos wrote:
Technically, Usenet is a 1990s-era service with declining traffic running on
2014 hardware and networks.

So what has the volume of Usenet traffic (excluding binaries) over the
years actually been?

Again I refer you Richard Kettlewell's elusive graph.


So elusive I couldn't find it. But I was really asking Theo what he
really meant by his statement and hoping for some information to back it up.

--
Rod

"Theo Markettos" wrote in message
...
In uk.railway Bob Eager wrote:
I do hope you find time, and experience the reality.

So what's the major time sink then?

FTAOD I'm talking about a radically slimmed-down service with:

No binaries. A lot of the cesspit of Usenet comes from binaries, not only
illegal content but silly things like people using Usenet as 'backup' -
encrypt your files, throw them at Usenet, get other people to pay for
hosting them. In essence binary-Usenet is a completely different beast:
it's a filesharing network that happens to use the same protocol, but its
demands on infrastructure are substantially different.

Cleanfeed gets rid of a lot of spam, excessive crossposting, strips
remaining binaries etc. It's a bit like SpamAssassin for Usenet. We use
it, it works.

The server basically runs on automatic, that means no user support, no
manual adding of newsgroups, generally all the manual tasks are minimised
by
declaring we don't support them. That's not a proposition everyone will
like, but what I'm outlining here is a no-frills low-maintenance service.
It's much easier to provide such a service if you don't charge for it,
because there's no billing, no user management, and people can't moan
about
not getting their money's worth.

The trouble with that line is that that is just what anyone setting
up a free usenet server would do and we haven't actually seen
even one that is anything like as reliable as NIN.

Dealing with user abuse is a potential problem that I don't have a handle
on: to some extent controls like 'only 25 posts per IP per day' can
minimise
that, but I don't know the size of the remaining problem.


Technically, Usenet is a 1990s-era service with declining traffic running
on
2014 hardware and networks. Usenet used to be a firehose of traffic,
but by today's standards it's quite moderate once you remove binaries from
the picture. That means the demands are relatively modest: there isn't a
scaling problem, because we used INN on Solaris boxes in the 1990s to run
Usenet servers with 1990s traffic volumes - volumes have gone down since
then but hardware has got much faster. Possibly the number of clients of
an
internet-wide NNTP server are more than the typical ISP server of the
1990s
- but I suspect being overwhelmed by demand for Usenet is problem we'd
dearly love to have.

I realise INN isn't the friendliest software in the world, but that seems
to
be mostly in setup costs rather than day-to-day running once you've got it
right.


But, of course, I haven't run a server. So I'm interested in what the
challenges actually are.

Theo

In uk.railway polygonum wrote:
On 28/12/2014 13:17, Huge wrote:
On 2014-12-28, polygonum wrote:
On 28/12/2014 11:43, Theo Markettos wrote:
Technically, Usenet is a 1990s-era service with declining traffic running on
2014 hardware and networks.

So what has the volume of Usenet traffic (excluding binaries) over the
years actually been?

Again I refer you Richard Kettlewell's elusive graph.


So elusive I couldn't find it. But I was really asking Theo what he
really meant by his statement and hoping for some information to back it up.

Here's Richard's stats:
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/spoolstats/
terraraq.org.uk carries a limited selection of hierarchies (uk.*, big-8,
plus a few others), but the traffic volume this year is about 20MB/day.

Here's our local feed stats:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/ch...n=News&sloth=3
(the blue 'in' graphs are the main relevant ones) - it's in SI units so '1m
art/s' here is 0.001 articles/s (86 articles/day). I can't read the graphs
very accurately, but it looks like a few hundred thousand articles a day.
That's consistent with the 20MB figure (terraraq and chiark are peers of
each other, so it isn't surprising volumes are similar). chiark's
/var/spool/news contains 15GB of data.

Here's the Cambridge University server stats, that go back to 1993:
http://web.archive.org/web/201208181...ewsvolume.html
- in 2008 it was 6GB/month, or 200MB/day. The peak was circa 1998-2002 with
20GB/month (650MB/day).

Of course, it's not just peering that matters, so you can multiply this by N
clients. But a cheap VPS these days comes with 1TB/month download
bandwidth. If the total traffic for Usenet is 20MB/day you'd need 50
million users downloading the entirety of Usenet every single day to exceed
the bandwidth of a $7pm VPS.

Should I also mention that a 1TB HDD is dead cheap these days? At peak 2002
volumes of 20GB/month you could have a retention of 4 years. At today's
volumes of 600MB/month you could retain for 140 years.

You probably want a better storage architecture than one HDD, but the point
stands. Storage and bandwidth are not a problem.

Theo

In article ,
Bob Eager writes:
On Fri, 26 Dec 2014 18:30:53 +0000, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 17:26:39 on Fri,
26 Dec 2014, Theo Markettos
remarked:

One of the ways around this would be for someone in the UK to do a B2B
deal with NIN to feed a Usenet server in the UK, and then sell
individual 'tenner a year' subscriptions to UK people; up to 8,100 of
them anyway.

What's special about NIN? It's a feed of Usenet articles, that runs
Cleanfeed to remove the spam. And? We could just set up a text-only
Usenet server that lives in the UK and do the same. Hosting is almost
at beer-tokens level these days (a 20 quid a month VPS would do it), so
chuck a few pennies in the pot and its sorted. Likewise settling up INN
is a bit arcane and tedious, but when it's done it's done.

Or you could just use a server someone else has set up, or which there
are numerous.

But the point is there's no massive day-to-day effort in running a
Usenet server,

I'm quite sure you are significantly underestimating the effort
required.

I'm quite sure you're right. I ranm an in-house one with relatively few
users and newsgroups (and no spam filtering) and that was bad enough.

I ran Sun Microsystems ones for a few years, 10 years ago.
ISTR we sat around the 100-150 mark in the top 1000 servers.
We piered between several of the well known European servers,
and did connections to some small companies.
BT actually offered very good usenet peering at the time
(although their ISP usenet service wasn't so highly regarded).

It wasn't an officially supported service inside Sun - just
best efforts. Mostly it would just run without any problems,
but when anything did go wrong, it could tie you up for quite
a long time fixing it.

I separated out the peering server from the readers server.
The peering server can use a simple cyclic newspool space
(a giant single file), whereas the readers servers use a
different technique so that different groups get different
expiry rules to make best use of the disk space.

If you are offering a commercial usenet service, and if you
will be allowing joe public to use it and have to handle
complaints and abuse inquiries, then there is actually quite
a lot to do.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]