Klarinet Archive - Posting 001112.txt from 1998/03

From: Mark Charette <charette@-----.com>
Subj: Why Klarinet is a bad MIDI distribution mechanism
Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 10:00:17 -0500

Joerg Peltzer wrote:
>
> > Joerg Peltzer wrote:
> >> What is a Gentleman?
>
> > Someone who doesn't post MIDI files to a mailing list.
>
> Oh, I'm sooo Sorry,
> i just thought someone would be interested in this....

And I'm sure some people are. That's not the point.

The Klarinet (and just about all other mailing lists) are created
by donations of time and material; in this case, Jim Fay, Cap Bromley,
and I'm sure some other people volunteer their time to keep
the mailing list going. In the few times that I've "hijacked" the
mailing list to let people know that there's a problem with the
real one, I've received an incredible amount of automated replies from
mail servers saying "no such person", "bogus address", and the like.
Jim and Cap get these bounced to their address, and they try to make
heads or tails out of them - it may have been a simple misspelling,
or it might be a spammer trying to take over the list.

The Virginia Community College system had donated the machinery and
line for Klarinet. They don't have to; I have this feeling that Jim
and Cap had to present their case and win it when we switched over from
the older mail list system more than a year ago. They have the
responsibilities of backing up the listserv machine, upgrading it,
and making sure that the mail goes out.

Each mail message (posting) that you send in is resent to everyone
on the list. If it's a text message, it might on average be 1000
characters or so. If we assume that there are 600 members of Klarinet,
we're talking 600K/message that needs to be distributed. Multiply
that by 50 messages/day, we're talking 30Mb/day. With a little
optimization, that gets cut to 10Mb a day.

Now, start sending MIDIs and GIF files around. A short one (like what
was sent) takes around 28K. So, instead of maybe 30Mb/day, we jump
to 46 Mb for the day, hopefully optimized to 15 Mb or so. One message
caused somewhere around a 50% increase in the total amount of traffic.

To handle this kind of thing, Usenet newsgroups were formed - messages
get sent to a server, and downloads are requested by the end
recipient, not automatically sent. That way 10s or 100s of thousands
of people can belong to a group and not overburden one system. That is,
it worked until the *.erotica.* newsgroups were formed and advertised.
They now overload the newsgroups and many servers are taking them off
their high-speed servers (or dropping them altogether - but that's
another story).

So, to wrap up the technical part - mail list are a horrid distribution
method for binary information, but wonderful for text.

If anyone wants to distribute binary data, the best way (IMNSHO)
is to let us know. Post a message saying "I've got a great MIDI -
email me for details". Or ask me to put it up on the Clarinet Pages
where everyone (not just the Klarinet list) can get to it. That way
we don't overload the list, and you get to help all of us out.

I don't have anything to do officially with the Klarinet list, but
I do answer questions from time to time about the technical aspects
of the list. I play with computers for a living, and pretty much know
most of the ins and outs of data communications.
--
Mark Charette | "This is a very democratic organization, so let's
charette@-----. All those who disagree with me, raise
MIKA Systems, Inc.| their hands." - Eugene Ormandy
Webmaster of http://www.sneezy.org/clarinet, The Clarinet Pages

   
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