🚀 go-pugleaf

Rick Ellis (ellis@ftel.net) wrote:
: In article <32DA734A.167EB0E7@net.com>, J. Prakash <prakash@net.com> wrote:
: >Rick Ellis wrote:
: >> Well, we got into this by talking about why many ISPs don't offer shell
: >> access.  I can tell you that while we do provide shell logins here almost
: >> nobody uses them.  Don't know why but that's how it has been going
: >> lately.
: >
: >All the more reason to offer shell accounts at lower rates! :)
: 
: Huh?  Shell accounts take more resources and have a larger security
: risk.  One person doing an ftp on a dial-up PPP doesn't have much impact.
: One person doing an ftp on a shell login can use a large portion of your
: Internet bandwidth.

Seriously don't follow this argument.  FTP to a shell account involves N 
bits/second coming in over the Net connection, presumably a T1 or higher, 
or at the very least a 56k line.  FTP to a PPP remote involves the same 
volume of incoming data, probably at the same rate due to local (ISP) 
buffering...then the same volume of data being sent *out* again over a 
slow phone line.  Seems that for the same FTP up/download, doing it to a 
shell account involves *less* overhead than to a PPP account.

Now, of course, once the data's on the shell account, it will likely be
moved to the client's home machine sooner or later, either via a protocol
(zmodem, ftp) or simply by being displayed to the telnet screen.  But a
certain amount of filtering may occur at the ISP ("Let's see...read first
couple of pages...nah, not interesting...rm foo.txt"), for a net savings
even taking this into account. 

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