Re: List response time...

On Tuesday 21 August 2001 12:59, Serguei Mokhov wrote:
> Looking at my message about the bug webpage and
> some other posts, I see that it was delayed for
> about 2h and a half. Some of the post were
> delayed for days... Why is that? Looks like
> the list has problems of some sort which cause
> these irregular delays.

Mailing lists don't scale well to large numbers of subscribers.  I see this 
delay constantly,on multiple lists.  The bigger the list gets, the slower the 
list gets (and the more loaded the server gets, right Marc? :-)).  Newsgroups 
scale a little better, but Usenet propagation delay was a problem even when 
full feeds were below 100MB per day.  Actually, Usenet propagation is better 
now than then, now that the majority of sites aren't uucp and fed batched 
with C-News. (or BNews, even....).  Usenet propagation delays used to be 
measured in days and sometimes weeks.  To get a message in two days was great 
time!

But I can remember when Usenet propagation delays were how you judged EXPIRE 
times and newsspool size.  And I also remember nasty tricks used when servers 
that didn't respect 'distribution:' were hit with 'expires:' headers with 
values below the mean propagation delay.....and I can recall getting CANCELS 
for postings two days before the posting to be canceled came trickling in....

We're still not as bad as BugTraq, though.  Not only is the message delayed 
two to three days, other people will have already replied to it, and 
discussion will have been closed off before I ever get a chance to say 
anything.  Well, maybe that's a good thing. :-)

I guess this IS one of the few advantages of having to use reply-all on this 
list....  Although then the discussion has moved on before the general list 
membership has had a  chance to read most of the recent replies....

The best thing to do is simply to expect propagation delay.
--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11