Date   : Sat, 04 Jun 1988 01:11:41 GMT
From   : tetra!budden@nosc.mil (Rex A. Buddenberg)
Subject: Posting 8 bit sources and binaries

The users of the 'arpa' side of the internet and the 'non-arpa'
are probably equally heterogeneous (myself, I'm actually on the
mil side).  So saying the usenet user needs are different
from an arpanet/simtel20 user is making a distinction where
there probably isn't any.

The problem is one of network abuse and capacity consumption.
If you post things like binaries, all those newsgroup sites get
tons of bits, whether the users want them or not.  The
solution within arpanet was to use simtel20 -- you only use
the network capacity you need to download what you want.

Unfortunately, we are running into a problem.  Defense Communications
Agency, which operates both the arpa and mil parts of DDN isn't
really in the business of providing us comms services as a free
good.  In a year or so, we will all be paying packet charges
for the services -- DCA has to pass the costs back to the users.
One of the unanswered questions is how you manage repositories like
Simtel20 or CU20B -- the costing algorithm does not account for
this at all.  Nobody in DCA really wants to kill them, but
they don't have a decent way to keep them providing the services.
Worse, while we can all see the benefits of these bboards, they
will be difficult to justify too -- who pays the packet charges
for bboard traffic?  The poster?  
If the reader is to incur them, he will have to pay
whether he actually reads or not.  Sticky.

So when Keith enforces the discipline, there are some very good
reasons.

Rex Buddenberg