comcast strikes again....

Michael Pelletier mvpel at hushmail.com
Mon Sep 22 11:14:37 EDT 2008


I can't say I'm particularly surprised they're leaving poor old Usenet News
to GigaNews and NewsDemon.

Managing a full Usenet feed was a hassle 10 years ago, I can hardly imagine
what it's like now - how many full 24x7 T3 lines does it take nowadays?
Let's see... in June a full feed averaged 3.98 terabytes per day
(http://www.newsdemon.com/average_feed_size.php) so that's 10.8 T3 lines
24x7 every single day, just for the AVERAGE load.

According to newsadmin.com's stats (http://www.newsadmin.com/usenet.asp),
text posts accounted for 0.3% of the articles yesterday, and the rest was
image, audio, video, executables, and unspecified file types.

In the count of posts by Usenet provider, Comcast.com ranks 17th, with a
paltry 1,275 posts in 2,176 parts on September 20 out of 14.4 MILLION
high-speed internet customers. The list bottoms out with number 33,
telia.net, with ONE post.

The top 100 text newsgroups by unique access bottoms out with #100,
alt.pl.regionalne.trojmiasto.ogloszenia, with 155 unique accesses.  Even
talk.origins, that good old eternal flame-war, only managed 944 unique
accesses yesterday.

Comcast users come in second place for unique newsgroups accessed, with a
1,390 yesterday, again, out of 14.4 million customers. So considering that
just the top 10 providers posted 7,545,985 individual articles on 9/20, it
seems safe to estimate that probably 99.9999% of Usenet articles are expired
from Comcast servers without a single reader access.  And Comcast is thus
paying good money for fairly comprehensive Usenet service to serve - at the
absolute maximum - 0.01% of its customer base, or 0.001% if each user
accessed an average of 10 newsgroups yesterday.

http://www.twine.com/item/11cwqrtjc-28d/r-i-p-usenet-1980-2008-huh
---
So, okay, Usenet, dead? It's been a joke for such a long time. Tell me it
ain't so. But, really, Usenet being still alive in this time frame would
itself be a cruel joke. It's best to remember Usenet of the golden age, I
guess, than to try and preserve it's antiquated ways which don't fit todays
Internet.
---

I'd much rather Comcast ditch Usenet than throttle my competing VoIP phone
service, frankly.

	-Michael Pelletier.

-----Original Message-----
From: gnhlug-discuss-bounces at mail.gnhlug.org
[mailto:gnhlug-discuss-bounces at mail.gnhlug.org] On Behalf Of Pete Snider
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2008 10:00 AM
To: gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
Subject: comcast strikes again....

comcast is doing it again, they're dropping usenet.  I saw the notice on
slashdot.com,  below is the announcement and the link:

http://www.comcast.net/newsgroups/?cookieattempt=1

The Comcast Newsgroups service has been discontinued.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

If you have already signed up for Comcast Newsgroups, please be aware that
this service will be discontinued on

10/25/2008

-pete
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