Charles Angelich wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

CA>> In countries where people pay for _all_ phone calls per minute 
CA>> (even local) Agora can save some money. Being able to download 
CA>> large files from a direct connect to a local BBS is much more 
CA>> efficient than dealing with Internet pauses and slow connects. 

RJT> Fido was designed from the ground up with connection efficiency in 
RJT> mind, as the primary thing, it appears. 

CA> I wasn't referring to FIDO, just any BBS using any software.

I would think that the same would apply to any bbs protocol.

CA>> In the USA we get a certain number of local calls for 'free' 
CA>> included with our base charge for just having a telephone. 
CA>> Americans probably don't notice how long it can take for a GUI 
CA>> browser to 'render' the display after it has downloaded all the 
CA>> data required. 

RJT> The hell I don't! I've got better things to do than sit here 
RJT> waiting for somebody's idea of a good page to finish loading. I 
RJT> was looking over a list of local business links earlier this 
RJT> evening, and if a page doesn't come completely up in a minute or 
RJT> so, I'm gone.

CA> The 'target' for HTML pages is supposed to be 23 seconds to load 
CA> and display (or less).

Oh?  That's an interesting figure,  where did you come across that info?  I
don't consider 23 seconds an unreasonable time to wait,  though much longer
than that and I start to get bothered by the delay.

It's not the rendering of the page on my end,  either,  it's that it's not all here.

RJT> I expect this sort of thing is used to justify faster connections, 
RJT> making the ISPs more money, but I like to be able to take what 
RJT> I've got and use it efficiently.

CA> No, not really. There is no direct subsidy between those who put up
CA> websites and ISPs (usually).

The sites in question,  though,  are _hosted_ by the ISP that I'm using. 
So any delays inherent in things is either a matter of the stuff used on
the page or their setup with networking.  Since I'm using an external modem
and can watch the lights,  I can see nontrivial amounts of time when
there's nothing coming down the pipe at all.

RJT> Besides that, the more I tie up my phone line with a protocol that 
RJT> doesn't consider connect time, the less chance that same phone 
RJT> line has to serve my bbs callers.

CA> Sounds like you need an Agora server. :-) 

I've not been ignoring your posts on the subject,  even if I haven't
otherwise commented much.  :-)

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