> Hello!
>
> I am trying to find the answer to a question. Here it
is.
>
> If you have a news server, and you are allowing 8
connections
> for each user, what happens if you allow 20
connections?
>
> I have heard two different things. One provider told
me that they
> would need 2.5x as many front ends, and it would end up
costing
> them a lot more because if 100 were needed today, 250
would be
> needed to do 20 connections.
>
> Another provider said that scaling reader capacity
mostly has to
> do with total throughput, not simultaneous connections,
and doubling
> the number of connections is more like 10% increase on
the server.
>
> These seem to be very different, and it looks to me
like someone is
> lying.
In the future, please see if you can word-wrap your messages
at around
72 columns. It's considered polite.
Your message is somewhat vague.
Overall load on a news reader is determined by various
factors. The
biggest factors are overall bandwidth, and how much overview
access the
clients are imposing on the reader.
Reading the answers and working back through to the
question, here's
what it sounds like.
I think you misunderstood something in the first provider's
response.
Almost nobody (except maybe Highwinds/Newshosting, Giganews,
UNS) would
have 100 front ends, and none of the companies that would
have that
many would say this. I assume the situation isn't as
described, because
as described it doesn't make sense.
Your first provider is possibly your ISP. Most ISP's these
days do not
run their own news servers, but instead pay a Usenet Service
Provider
to actually do it for them. Many ISP's pay by the
connection. They
allow a certain number of connections per user, and pay a
USP a certain
amount depending on how many connections are actually used,
overall.
In such a case, yes, the ISP would end up paying more. It
is very
possible that your ISP is buying 100 connections from some
USP, and is
afraid of having to pay for 250 if they allow more
connections. They
pay a fixed price per connection.
Your second provider is approximately correct, though the
specifics are
highly dependent on the circumstances.
A USP offering 8 connections (without speed limits) can
probably fill
the average broadband connection very easily. If you're
pushing 5
megabits out over 8 connections, that taxes the reader a
certain amount.
Increasing the number of connections to 20, assuming it was
done globally
and everyone started actually using 20, would have several
effects:
1) Increased TCP/IP buffer usage, increasing the system load
to manage
connections and keep data flowing smoothly
2) Increased application load within dreaderd, as the
processes would
need to iterate through a larger list of threads and
mange them
3) Additional VM stress on the machine, since your average
client will
GROUP into each group that it is downloading from
4) Need for the ability to clear additional authentication
requests per
second
In fact, increasing from 8 to 20 *could* result in a
situation where
the usage would be very different, if you had a client where
it was
GROUP'ing into different groups for each connection, but
that sort of
thing would still be a limited effect.
However, the overall load on the machine, assuming that
you're not
actually trying to break things, shouldn't increase much at
all under
normal usage patterns.
I could maybe see a case for additional connections on a
server resulting
in up to 20% additional load. I'd expect more like 5-10%.
It would
NEVER require scaling the number of readers linearly with
the number of
connections. That's simply wacky and deranged.
This Road Runner thing must be screwing with a lot of
providers, because
I've had other questions about increasing parallel
connections. The real
answer is that increasing parallel connections is only a
short term fix,
because if they're limiting rates per-connection, when they
notice that
you've increased to 20 connections, they're just going to
get ticked off
and rate limit your WHOLE LINE to 256 kilobits or something
nasty like
that.
Don't expect that much from your ISP. They're paying for
it.
... JG
--
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me
one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n
position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way
too many apples.
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