Subject: Re: example .procmailrc stuff for announce lists

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2001 15:49:40 -0700 (MST)

> From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>

> >For those who don't know procmail, here is a sample config for just 
> >the IETF-announce list.  I think this is what Harald is talking 
> >about.
>
> Actually, no, this wasn't what Harald was talking about. I *could* 
> run procmail if I really wanted all of that traffic to come to my 
> machine. But I don't. It's actually putting the load on my local 
> network and machine that I consider the problem. ...

Please help me understand.  Perhaps 1000 mail messages per year, each
containing about 6 KBytes, is a significant extra load for Mr. Resnick's
local network and machine.  Since 6 MByte in a year is equivalent to
at most about 150 HTTP pages in a year, Mr. Resnick's network and
machine must not be used for "web surfing."  Is that true?

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

---

From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 09:28:16 +0100

> machine must not be used for "web surfing."  Is that true?

real numbers are nice.

it's approximately 4 kbytes, and up to 50 messages per day during "hectic 
time" (such as November 16). I think the total is around 4000 messages/year.

so at 33.6 kbits/sec, it is around 45 seconds of added download time for 
each day of I-D announcements. Your modem speed and efficiency may vary.

                     Harald

---

From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 12:16:49 -0600

On 11/23/01 at 9:28 AM +0100, Harald Alvestrand wrote:

>>Perhaps 1000 mail messages per year, each containing about 6 
>>KBytes, is a significant extra load for Mr. Resnick's local network 
>>and machine.  Since 6 MByte in a year is equivalent to at most 
>>about 150 HTTP pages in a year, Mr. Resnick's network and machine 
>>must not be used for "web surfing."  Is that true?
>
>real numbers are nice.
>
>it's approximately 4 kbytes, and up to 50 messages per day during 
>"hectic time" (such as November 16). I think the total is around 
>4000 messages/year.
>
>so at 33.6 kbits/sec, it is around 45 seconds of added download time 
>for each day of I-D announcements. Your modem speed and efficiency 
>may vary.

Ah, if "real" numbers were only real. First let's discuss the actual 
setup that's causing the problem (and to an extent Vernon is correct 
in his assessment): It's not my regular DSL network connection which 
I use when I'm at home, but my connection back to that network when I 
am using my Handspring Visor on the road. I've got a maximum 14.4kbps 
connection over my mobile phone back to my home network. So, even if 
life were perfect, on the hectic days of 50 messages at 4K a message 
(200kB or 1.6Mb of data), that's about 2 minutes of download time per 
day. But as we all know, life ain't perfect. First of all, on those 
hectic days, all of those messages come down at once in my morning 
download, so it's not evenly distributed over the day. And given 
network slowdowns on a wireless link from time to time, the extra 
data produced by the actual protocol work, the round trips and 
latencies involved (especially if I choose to do IMAP instead of 
POP), and processing for the filtering, we're actually talking about 
more like 4 to 6 minutes of online time just devoted to these 
messages. In the course of a life, not a big amount of time, but I 
would claim that 4 to 6 minutes added to my mail check is a pretty 
serious hit. (It would solve my problem I could do server side 
filtering. For assorted reasons, I can't.)

So, issue number one for me is the above scenario. But the other 
interesting question is the hit the secretariat takes. Even if there 
were only 1000 subscribers to IETF-Announce, that's 200MB of data on 
the busy days. However, my guess (and the secretariat can give us the 
real numbers) is that that number is at least an order of magnitude 
too low. My theory is that a serious chunk could be taken out of the 
overall output if I-D's were separated out because not nearly as many 
people would subscribe to get all of the I-D announcements. Given the 
low investment of time it would take to test this out, I think it 
would be worth attempting it.

pr
-- 
Pete Resnick <mailto:[email-masked]>
QUALCOMM Incorporated