I notice that there's been a dearth of comment in here about this. Does the NZNOG community not especially care, or has this just flown below the radar? -- Matthew Poole "Don't use force. Get a bigger hammer."
Matthew Poole wrote:
I notice that there's been a dearth of comment in here about this. Does the NZNOG community not especially care, or has this just flown below the radar?
Problem beer mentioned, Problem beer acknowledged, Problem had a beer put in place. Problem solved. Is there beer any further beer for discussion?
On Tue, 2006-05-02 at 16:37 +1200, Matthew Poole wrote:
I notice that there's been a dearth of comment in here about this. Does the NZNOG community not especially care, or has this just flown below the radar?
I guess it's flown below the radar? Presumably the signal to noise ratio of usenet has improved in the ten years since I gave up on it - perhaps because all the spam-encouraging eyeballs went somewhere else. Still, I can well imagine that Xtra's "broadband" offerings would be useful for reading usenet, but really not for much else... certainly my SSH connections have improved no end since I canned my very-much-A DSL connection. So, just for interest's sake, what's up with Xtra and usenet? Time for another beer, I think. Cheers, Andrew.
On Tue, 2 May 2006, Andrew McMillan wrote:
So, just for interest's sake, what's up with Xtra and usenet?
On Friday, in postings to all groups on their NNTP server, Xtra announced that they're discontinuing the service from tomorrow. There was no other notification given. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=10379801 -- Matthew Poole "Don't use force. Get a bigger hammer."
On Tue, 2 May 2006, Matthew Poole wrote:
On Tue, 2 May 2006, Andrew McMillan wrote:
So, just for interest's sake, what's up with Xtra and usenet?
On Friday, in postings to all groups on their NNTP server, Xtra announced that they're discontinuing the service from tomorrow. There was no other notification given.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=10379801
Have to admitt that personally i've not used Usenet in some time, and thus this was the first i'd heard about it (i.e. thanks to whoever posted this in the first place...) My personal POV is that this is a shocking way to deal with the situation, as respects customer service... but then that is just my opinion. I am however interested in yours: http://www.blakjak.net/node/497 Anyone who'd care to vote in the two polls related to this issue found at the above link, a little bit of impromptu statistics gathering. It might also save a flurry of 'me too's.'. I am interested to see whether there is an opinion that regardless of the 'how' this was done by Xtra, that this may infact have been a 'smart' idea (from a business POV). One assumes you take into account the business overheads of running a usenet server in the first place, and that there is a noticable benefit to the company by cancelling the service... Mark.
On Tue, 2 May 2006, Mark Foster wrote:
I am interested to see whether there is an opinion that regardless of the 'how' this was done by Xtra, that this may infact have been a 'smart' idea (from a business POV). One assumes you take into account the business overheads of running a usenet server in the first place, and that there is a noticable benefit to the company by cancelling the service...
I'm not overly happy, but I certainly understand their point of view. The overheads are probably huge - certainly when I was in a position to know, the news server was one big-ass box, probably the biggest single box in the entire environment. The monthly support costs (power, cooling, rent of rack space, support agreements) alone would be fairly crippling, and noises were being made back then about the volume of incoming international traffic required to feed the thing. I'm only mildly annoyed about them cutting it off because I never get time to read Usenet any more anyway. I barely get time to read the things I'm really interested in, like this list. Side note: anyone ever had to find decent connectivity in the area between Hamilton and Cambridge? It's nasty. Cheers Richard
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 ~ Richard Stevenson wrote: | I'm not overly happy, but I certainly understand their point of view. | The overheads are probably huge - certainly when I was in a position to | know, the news server was one big-ass box, probably the biggest single box | in the entire environment. The monthly support costs (power, cooling, | rent of rack space, support agreements) alone would be fairly crippling, The crippling thing about Xtra in general is the laughter experienced by ~ people with more than 5 brain cells, who have to put up with crippling back haul issues, crippled in their realisation that in order to experience the net the way they used to, when NNTP was the shiz, pretty much means moving to somewhere like PNG, where the local ISP's (all 5 of them), don't give a rat's ass, if port 25 is open, NNTP is still fun to use and all about 6 thousand net users have only 6MB of bandwidth to share. Nice to see how progress gets us to where we are, in a stranglehold. | and noises were being made back then about the volume of incoming | international traffic required to feed the thing. I'm only mildly annoyed | about them cutting it off because I never get time to read Usenet any more | anyway. I barely get time to read the things I'm really interested in, | like this list. | | Side note: anyone ever had to find decent connectivity in the area | between Hamilton and Cambridge? It's nasty. Dexcel Has a pretty good Omni wireless system out Newstead way | | Cheers | | Richard | | _______________________________________________ | NZNOG mailing list | NZNOG(a)list.waikato.ac.nz | http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/nznog | -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (MingW32) iEYEARECAAYFAkRXQvMACgkQ5/N28r/rRl54LwCdFxpUODzPFTV2MMM5o61p3Toc c9cAn1NOeKG5rTGOLqB4j2oKGJpRRGBH =Sk9l -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On 2/05/2006, at 11:04 PM, Richard Stevenson wrote:
On Tue, 2 May 2006, Mark Foster wrote:
I am interested to see whether there is an opinion that regardless of the 'how' this was done by Xtra, that this may infact have been a 'smart' idea (from a business POV). One assumes you take into account the business overheads of running a usenet server in the first place, and that there is a noticable benefit to the company by cancelling the service...
I'm not overly happy, but I certainly understand their point of view. The overheads are probably huge - certainly when I was in a position to know, the news server was one big-ass box, probably the biggest single box in the entire environment. The monthly support costs (power, cooling, rent of rack space, support agreements) alone would be fairly crippling, and noises were being made back then about the volume of incoming international traffic required to feed the thing. I'm only mildly annoyed about them cutting it off because I never get time to read Usenet any more anyway. I barely get time to read the things I'm really interested in, like this list.
Side note: anyone ever had to find decent connectivity in the area between Hamilton and Cambridge? It's nasty.
Cheers
Richard
I used to run FidoNet nodes and then NNTP servers in the 90s. The quality of the groups were good, and traffic volumes were do-able. Today its not financially lucrative to run a NNTP server, let alone the possible implications in "hosting gigs of porn and warez". If one were to carry all or most of the groups with a day or so of messages, a cyclic filesystem would loop around in hours on a decent storage device. RSS / IMAP / and websites can fully replace the functionality of NNTP for a fraction of the cost and do it with more reliability and efficiency. The death of NNTP is eminent and I think this latest status from Xtra is evidence. Technology aside, the web/Internet is too big to organize into structural folders and hierarchies. Let's let NNTP die like Archie, Veronica, and Gopher, while building some cool services that are "use"ful. Cheers, Truman
On 2/05/2006 7:23 p.m., Andrew McMillan wrote:
On Tue, 2006-05-02 at 16:37 +1200, Matthew Poole wrote:
I notice that there's been a dearth of comment in here about this. Does the NZNOG community not especially care, or has this just flown below the radar?
I guess it's flown below the radar? Presumably the signal to noise ratio of usenet has improved in the ten years since I gave up on it - perhaps because all the spam-encouraging eyeballs went somewhere else.
Still, I can well imagine that Xtra's "broadband" offerings would be useful for reading usenet, but really not for much else... certainly my SSH connections have improved no end since I canned my very-much-A DSL connection.
So, just for interest's sake, what's up with Xtra and usenet?
Time for another beer, I think.
I'm starting to think that the whole continued carry on with 'beer' being mentioned all the time is getting a bit over the top. Surely we have better things to be concerned about than mentioning beer in everything we write? Are people discussing things that are that far offtopic that they need to mention 'beer' in some lame attempt to keep on topic what else they say? (No that's not directed at you in particular, Andrew). I don't think it is an image that we should be pushing, given this is a public mailing list afterall. And to bring this back on topic, I imagine the topic of Xtra Usenet has gone under the radar as it is probably more a case of Xtra's customers being affected rather than too many people on this list. As a techie type user (ex ISP admin), I'm totally turned off Xtra anyway right now - port 25 blocking was one thing, but removing NNTP access - glad I'm on another ISP........ reuben (who does like beer, but not *that* much that I have to mention it all the time)
participants (8)
-
Andrew McMillan -
Jeremy Brooking -
Mark Foster -
Matthew Poole -
Reuben Farrelly -
Richard Stevenson -
Simon Oldham -
Truman Boyes