🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <EMV.91Jun21004543@bronte.aa.ox.com> emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) writes:

>   Quite!  Batch SMTP already exists and is supported by Smail 3.1 (among
>   other transports).  What say you, UUNET?  BSMTP could cut down
>   significantly on E-Mail processing overhead, and lots of us out here
>   in modemland are already using it.
>
>Chip, could you give a tutorial on compressed batched SMTP ?  That
>would seem to be the ideal thing for long-haul links with high modem
>costs.  How to set it up within smail, what the gotchas are, how much
>of a savings in on-line time there is and at what cost in extra
>compression vs. benefit in fewer uuxes done.

In addition to the compression (which could be done apart from the batching
if you have large mail messages) the real savings is in having fewer
files for uucico to handle, especially if you are using PEP modems with
spoofing.  The spoofing mode only works within a file with the upper-level
handshaking for each file suffering from the modem's slow turn around time.
Since normaly uucp mail takes two files per message (data in one, command
in the other) reducing this to two files per batch can be a big win.
In addition you get the ability to use SMPT addressing with unlimited
recipients per message which is nice if you run list expanders.

The down side is that (a) the receiving site must be set up to match,
(b) you need to impose an arbitrary delay in delivery to accumulate
a batch and you may not be able to syncronize the batching with inbound
calls, and (c) Smail3's (B)SMTP transport isn't quite binary transparent
in that the convertion of LF's to CR/LF and extra leading '.'s on
lines that start with '.' doesn't always invert (for example if the
message body contains CR's with no LF).

>Numbers would be nice to know, if they're convincing we'll start to
>offer the service on our dialups.

Look at real time (from your phone bill) vs. uucp's xferstats numbers
to get an idea of how much time you spend in the between-file handshakes.

Les Mikesell
  les@chinet.chi.il.us