Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.bhp.com.au!mel.dit.csiro.au!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!dish.news.pipex.net!pipex!news.be.innet.net!INbe.net!news.nl.innet.net!INnl.net!hunter.premier.net!news.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!dispatch.news.demon.net!demon!awfulhak.demon.co.uk!awfulhak.demon.co.uk!awfulhak.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail From: brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk (Brian Somers) Newsgroups: demon.ip.support,demon.tech.unix,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Batch FTP and Web Pages Followup-To: demon.ip.support,demon.tech.unix,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Date: 2 Jul 1996 21:55:39 -0500 Organization: Coverform Ltd. Lines: 42 Message-ID: <4rcnfb$bg@anorak.coverform.lan> References: <31D4AA3A.BC0@www.play-hookey.com> <836073421snz@dsl.co.uk> <4r4oup$o76@newsgate.duke.edu> <31D5EB27.6C97@www.play-hookey.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.coverform.lan X-NNTP-Posting-Host: awfulhak.demon.co.uk X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Ken Bigelow (kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com) wrote: : I don't know who strung my lines together; I unstrung them manually, however. : Now: granted that I have my own site, with a 24-hr connection to my ISP, I still : think you're overlooking a key point I was trying to make. If all your connections : are (shudder) 200 b/s, what does it matter whether you get a 2 MB document in one : piece or in 200 pieces? If anything, your total connect time will *increase* if you : split up the job, simply because you must take the time to establish a connection to : the host each and every time you access it. : On the other hand, if your connections are of variable speed depending on general : load, why not pick the most efficient time for your purposes? If that is 2:00 AM, so : be it. You could, for example, preset Netscape or most other major browsers to load : the page of specific interest (see the Options menu, and pick General Preferences) : when it starts. Then, write a shell script to start Xwindow, PPP, and Netscape, and : have your cron daemon start it at the appropriate time. The problem isn't time-of-day or fixed-bandwidth, rather an intermediate "bad" connection. I don't know if it's specifically Demon (both my ISP and that of the original poster), but links from demon to some sites is enormously slow. If I connect using a 28k modem (and I pay for the amount of time for which I'm connected), I get about 4k/second throughput - but only to ftp.demon.co.uk. I get about 3.5k throughput to src.doc.ic.ac.uk (Imperial college - has most things) but only because demon has some sort of decent direct connection to this machine. Connecting to say ryukyu.mt.cs.keio.ac.jp gives me about 200 bytes/sec. If you do a ping, you see that about one in three packets are lost - hence, ftp spends most of it's time saying "what was the bit in the middle?". The posters original idea was to get the information from somewhere like Japan to London without having to hang around on the phone to do it. Then, once the info is on a local machine (say www.demon.co.uk), I can pull it down at 4k/sec - costing me 1/20th for the privilege. BTW... your lines are a tad long - I'm running X, but some are running 80x25 screens that look silly with ~80 character lines :-\ -- Brian <brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk> Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour....