🚀 go-pugleaf

Karl Denninger <karl@MCS.COM> writes:
> MCSNet has been around in one form or another since '87. ...
> 
> MCSNet has been moving mail and news much longer than CLOUT has, and we have
> original black-case Telebit Trailblazers (which I bought new) to
> prove it :-). 

MUCH longer?  A bit over a year.  The oldest document I currently have
online indicates that the Clout Project had been running for at least
a month by 7 November 1988.  We already had an Internet connection by
December :-).

If we're going to be throwing around firsts and oldests, credit must
definately be given to Randy Suess (and of course Ward Christiansen
<-sorry about the spelling...).  CBBS #1 went online about 15 years
ago, and chinet came online about 10 years ago.

A lot of us cut our email teeth on chinet.  I'm quite happy that
Randy still maintains the alias piggy@chinet.chi.il.us for me.  It was
my second email address, and my first permanent email address.

> I remember when a full net feed was in the single-megabyte size range.  Now
> it's about 60MB/day and growing like crazy.

I've got a theory about this:  A full feed has almost always taken 4-6
hours.  I wasn't involved with UseNet news when 300 baud modems were
still standard, but I remember when 2400 baud modems replaced 1200
baud modems--UseNet volume double within a few months.  When 9600 baud
modems became widely available, UseNet volume quadrupled within
months.

By this reasoning, most UseNet sites can currently move about 3000
bytes/second on uncompressed data.  This is only a wee bit better than
current state-of-the-art for dialup technology.

The next step (56Kbaud) should roughly quadruple the volume again.

I don't have a "why" for this.  It's just something I've noticed.