walt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> posted [EMAIL PROTECTED], excerpted below, on Tue, 29 Jul 2008 02:36:46 +0000:
> On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:32:46 -0400, Daryl Styrk wrote: > >> Why only 4? > > I have no idea why people want even that many connections, so I'm hoping > someone here can explain it to both of us. > > I suppose if you want to post to one group while you read a second group > and download headers from a third group -- well, that's three > connections. What do you do with the fourth one? > > I once asked a newsadmin why he advertised that he allows ten > connections and his answer was (after filtering the BS) that his > competitors did the same, so he has to compete. It's like bragging > about the number of cup holders in your minivan. Most people still > commute to work with only one person aboard... The biggest reason for multiple connections is that many ISP-bundled or cheap pay providers cap the per-connections speeds, then allow you X connections. For binaries, overall download speed matters, and it doesn't particularly matter whether that's a single connection or 20, so if per-connection speeds are capped, you use as many as you can. Using Cox (my ISP) as an example, when I first signed up, the total Internet speed was 3 Mbit down, but they limited the news servers to 384kbps per connection, four connections per server, three servers available (one could log in to all three at once), so 4*384kbps ~ 1.5Mbps per server (over the four connections) * 3 servers ~ 4.5 Mbps theoretical news speed, but as I said we had a 3 Mbit pipe so many would go three connections to two servers and two to the third, 3 Mbit total, then use a third connection on the third server for a separate text or posting session using little downstream bandwidth. That left a connection free on each to get tied up in timeout errors or something, without killing the download speeds. Later Cox upped the general pipe speed, first to 4 Mbit, then higher, now 6-9 Mbit at the standard tier (7 Mbit here in Phoenix), which would have been /great/, except they cut the third news server at about the same time, so we were still stuck with 3 Mbit max news service (384kbps per connection, 4 connections per server, two servers), tho it now didn't max out our entire Internet connection. That was OK when the pipe was 4 Mbit as it allowed one to do other things, say stream Internet radio at the same time, without killing the news speed, but as general Internet speeds increased, it got more and more frustrating as soon enough, the news speeds seemed pretty restricted. About a year and a half ago, they cut news speeds further when they outsourced, to HighWindsMedia (which can't seem to keep its act together, there's almost constantly some problem or another, often "stuck" connections that you have to change your connected MAC address in ordered to get a new IP address to ditch). HWM still has two server-farms available to us, but they track connections globally (and as mentioned, often get one or more "stuck", which sucks!), and we are now only allowed four connections total. At least they upped the speed per connection, to a half-megabit, * 4 connections = 2 Mbps total, but that's still a bandwidth cut from before, PLUS with the crappy service and stuck connections, one can't even depend on that. Oh, well, I've argued for quite some time that anyone real serious about their news binaries will have at least two sources, generally a low reliability but unlimited or low-cost-per-byte provider (which HWM is here) for most stuff, and a high reliability high completion high retention "premium" server that'll probably cost way more per byte, but that is only used for fills not on the "bulk" server, so it works out well. At least Cox is still providing news, including (most) alt.binaries.*, unlike many ISPs these days, and the servers do usually work well enough to fill the role of the cheap "bulk" server -- if you are willing to change your MAC address and reconnect to get a new IP occasionally, when connections start sticking. The number of connections to full bandwidth cap can also depend on client implementation and computer speed. Pan uses a separate decoding thread now, but at some point in the past, as a file completed pan wouldn't start a new download on whatever connection completed it until the decode was complete. Of course, that lowered possible per-connection speed, so provided you had connections to spare, you'd have an extra one going to bring your total download speed back up toward overall cap, if it wasn't per connection. I also know households with several users and several different computers (generally connected thru a NAPT based router so on a single public IP). They like the flexibility of multiple connections so 2 or more people can download at once, each with a set connection limit less than the total allowed in ordered to do so. Finally... Outlook Express uses up to four connections depending on how you use it, but can only make GOOD use of two -- the other two are for low bandwidth stuff like getting the list of new groups since last update, etc. This is one reason why four connections is so common -- OE will often throw up errors if you don't have four, and OE is widely enough used and often the only "officially" supported client. I know that's why Cox has always had four per server -- they tried three, but their support costs jumped thru the roof with folks calling in due to the errors. So OE is crappy, no doubt about it, but at least here on Cox, we have OE and its users to thank that we aren't even FURTHER limited in connections and therefore bandwidth, since each connection is bandwidth capped. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman _______________________________________________ Pan-users mailing list Pan-users@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pan-users
