With Grex growing and cpu and phone line usage going up...

For those users who have systems at home that can handle uucp and mail
and/or news on a local basis, would it be a good idea to allow these users
to download their mail and news and read it locally instead of online?

It seems to me it would free up the CPU, hard disk and phone lines so that
others who don't have capable systems could use those resources.  I would
think that it would free up these resources enough to hold off on some of
the planned upgrades.

Persons running Linux, 386BSD, or other Unix-type machinery should have no
trouble at all getting connected.  DOS is possible but not nice and I'm
clueless with respect to the status of Mac software.

Are there problems with the domain server that I'm missing?  I wouldn't
think that would be a big deal for them, as the mail load won't change,
just the place its read.  Isn't this an agreement between the user and
Grex?  If its not, can it be made to?

The service would have to be setup with an understanding of how
it is to be used.  Any breach of procedures would call for re-examination
of the user in this respect.  Abuse can't be tolerated, but cooperation
would benefit all grex users, no?

I'm just tossing out some ideas here.  What are users' and grex' comments?

14 responses total.

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Sorry if I misrepresented things to you a bit, Jeff.  I think
everyone agrees that having Grex talk to home UUCP sites would
be just fine (although others should feel free to speak up if
they disagree for some reason).  However, the real issue is
whether we should register those sites in the cyberspace.org
domain.  On the one hand, it allows us to easily register
users' home machines, and take some of the load off the Internet
sites that would otherwise have to have more special-purpose
stuff in their mailer configuration.  On the other hand, there's
the fact that we might want to keep the machines in cyberspace.org
limited to those that are under direct administrative control
of the Grex staff and board.

I personally think that registering user machines under
cyberspace.org is a good idea, and that it doesn't really represent
things any differently than posting/mailing from Grex would.
But I'm open to input on this.

I think that sites just for News would be okay, and they don't require
internet registration, as long as they don't post at home, (do that on
grex), and don't use the e-mail.  I've been waiting for about half a 
month for my UUCP map request to get finished, and according to the people
there, it's in the queue, but the distance from the end is unknown to me.

One worry is this:
        I've got a feed off of netmeg for about 4-5 groups, and today I spent
about 30 mins in one shot transferring news from meg to me at 2400bps.  We'd
have that same problem with grex, and more so if we used all the lines for
this.  I think that this is a great idea, but we don't have the resources for
it here on grex.

I'd be willing to help people with DOS boxes to get their stuff online if
we decide to do this.  (as a service to grex, and it's users)

Even 30 minutes is shorter than the 2 hour stints I do.

That was just for the last few hours tho.

It depends a lot on which groups you get.  A person getting only
alt.binaries.* is going to be on a lot longer than a person getting
a few comp.sys.* groups.

     Ok, I'm going to take the plunge and admit that I haven't the faintest
idea what uucp would do for me.  What can I do with uucp that I can't do
here?  I'm clueless, so start basic.
     Chris

I'm even more ignorant & confused than Chris.

UUCP will let you do the following:

        1) Get your E-Mail delivered to you at your home computer for offline
reading (if you wish).
        2) Allow you to get your news either 
                a) mailed to your account on your computer
                b) fed into spool directories.
                (I have no idea if there is a news reader for DOS, but I
                 assume that you could find one somewhere)
        3) If you fill out the proper paperwork, you can get yourself
registered with the internet, and therefore, your system will be able to
get e-mail from anywhere in the world to some domain that you picked.  When
I registered mine, I picked   redhead.ypsi.mi.us, which makes me
jared@redhead.ypsi.mi.us .  This is nice for me, because I can read my
mail offline, store the old mail in my mailbox here without having
people complain, You're using TOO MUCH DISK SPACE! or stuff.  That is a 
common problem on m-net.  I just got a notice this morning saying "You're
over your limit".  [it was a misunderstanding, but that's a long story...]

        Anyways.  There are many features that getting a UUCP mail and/or
news feed off of grex would do for you.  I would not advise the news
feed as much as the mail, because the news can be a BIG disk hog if you get
too many newsgroups, and unless you have a fast modem, (doesn't matter
anyways, since grex is stuck at 2400 except for the route box), you're
stuck transferring news at 2400bps, which I must say is VERY slow.

        If you want to get an account, you need to talk to Marc (login id
mju) about getting a UUCP account, and I will be willing to help you to
get UUPC (for the DOS world) setup, and working on your home system, along
with getting you a copy of all the paperwork you need to fill out if you're
going to get registered with the internet.

If you become registered with internet and install UUCP software, does
that give you full internet access such as telnet and ftp?

No.
Except for "ftpmail".  That is a way you can get stuff that is normally
ftp via mail.  Drop me a message if you're interesetd in that.

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The defining quanntity is, subject to revision by meg, email of 50K.

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