On Thu, 15 Jun 1995 07:52:34 +0900 Dan Kanagy <dkanagy@netcom.com> said:
>Based on the advice given here, I looked into running either
>procmail/SmartList or MReply under my shell account at NETCOM as an
>alternative. This would have likely worked. However, I also learned that
>NETCOM runs an automated detached-process killer that will occasionally
>kill mailing list messages being processed in the case of MReply.
I find this discussion a bit surprising. You're trying to run a large,
busy list for free on a shell account, and seem surprised that the ISP is
taking steps to prevent this. I don't know what the contract says of
course, but looking at the business situation, the fees you're paying the
ISP are for a normal, single-person level of usage of the shell account.
That means, I don't know, a couple dozen messages a day, maybe a hundred,
certainly not tens of thousands. Running large, busy lists costs real
money, so it's no wonder that Netcom wants to recover its costs and
prevent abuse. Another issue is that your shell account would be on a
system that is primarily used by people with shell accounts who expect
quick delivery of private mail. If say a couple dozen users were to
inject 10k deliveries into the system each, delivery times for personal
mail could be dramatically impacted and everyone would suffer. If I were
an ISP I wouldn't want to mix mailing list traffic with personal traffic.
Even if I offered lists for free, I would demand that it be done on a
separate machine.
>The list I am considering relocating concerns Japanese/English
>translation, has about 250 subscribers, and generates about 30 notes a
>day.
To give you an example, for 250 subscribers we would charge $460 a year.
That's with LISTSERV and (very soon - just got the box today) LSMTP, ie
your users would get the messages in under 2 minutes. 250 is not what I
would call a large list, but it's still enough traffic that there is a
three-figure cost to the provider. You can't really expect to get this
for free, or at least not with a good level of service. I mean, one could
throw together a PC with a free list manager, make sure it's up before
going home for the day and otherwise not pay any attention to it, and
sell 'as is' lists for $5 a month, or maybe even free with your
subscription, but people are on their own and if it's slow, well, tough.
That's one thing. But good service costs real money. You need fast
machines with lots of memory so they don't swap themselves to death even
during peak hours, people to monitor them regularly and answer questions,
software that scales up to large workloads so you don't have to explain
to customers why the cost per delivery *increases* with volume, etc.
Eric
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