On Oct 10, 1996 at 16:48, Jeff Green of 3:711/934.20 wrote:

 DM>> Surprisingly, it's been better than most days. I had a record
 DM>> transfer rate from the USA, 7.5Kbps (ISDN - in case you're
 DM>> wondering),
 JG>
 JG> ISDN!! Bastard!

Remember, chances are that means he's subject to Telstra's pricing regime
and their "service guarantees" (ahem).  ;-)  I've just got to
learn to live with our hunky E3{*} microwave.

{*} 34Mbps.  ;-)

 JG> I got to 97% of that before the connection died :-(

Hasn't it appeared on an Australian mirror site yet, like luga?

    ftp://ftp.latrobe.edu.au/pub/os2/os2/

 JG> My connects in the last couple of days have been very good for a 28.8k
 JG> connect. I also hope it stays this way.

Could be any number of reasons:

* The universities (and other large organisations and ISPs) are "getting
  tough" about wasted international traffic.  Peer proxying/caching is a
  *big* project at present (NSW RNO just agreed to spend $30,000-$40,000
  on a dedicated box, it's estimated it'll take 69 days for the costs to
  be recovered thanks to the traffic it'll save);  our own major proxy
  (one of four within Nepean) sees an average of 200,000-300,000 requests
  per day (record is over 400,000), saving anywhere from 30-60% (depends on
  the day) of external traffic.  Thanks to peering between various sites,
  if one proxy doesn't have a page it checks with the others before making
  the long haul over the int'l link.

* Telstra (Paddington, NSW), MCI (San Franciso, CA) and BBN Planet (Palo
  Alto, CA) have all had problems in recent days/weeks, meaning that people
  trying to "do work" (ahem) have been frustrated and probably gave up,
  leading to less people generating traffic, and more available bandwidth for
  everyone else.

* Perhaps the initial hype has worn off and now you're starting to see only
  the "genuine" (ahem) 'net users remain with all the party-goers moving on
  to the next Big Thing(tm).

* Maybe all those modems failing to connect and/or stay connected is really
  a good idea after all...

Cheers..


    - dave
    d.begley{at}ieee.org

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