I had to write this 'cause my mailbox is getting chocker with
complaints that people can't access The Pits cause its too slow.
For all of those who missed my earlier posts on this heres the reason.
We're in a lucky position that we don't pay for our webspace. We get a
lot of flexibility in what we can do with our ISP and at the moment we
don't make any money to switch server. And anyway, I'm unemployed.
As far as we know our ISP has only got two T1 lines to the east cost
of America which has to carry all their users traffic in and out as
well as worldwide users trying to contact them.
If you think you've got problems you want to see how hard it is trying
to access sites in the US from the UK!
People from places like Australia get routed via satellite to a ground
station in the US, onto Washington and then out via the T1 lines to
our box. All in all a round trip of 8000km.
Surfing the web is a little like driving around. If you take
backroads, you'll probably find that theres no traffic and your speed
can be maintained. Where as, if you could drive from Australia to the
UK you'd find that as you join busy routes or hit busy junctions you
have to slow down or stop. Its the same with the Web.
At present, there is nothing we can economically do to speed up access
to The Pits UK site.
However, as I've mentioned before we have founf someone who is going
to set up a US mirror of The Pits in Florida.
Some users in Europe may find accessing this site quicker as they will
probably by pass our ISP and their T1 lines.
Once again, the next update at The Pits is scheduled for the end of
this week.
The EDA for the US Mirror is FEB 5TH 1996.
I won't answer anymore e-mails complaining about server speed and
after the update, I won't e-mail files except for exceptional
circumstances.
Jed
The Pits
www.ukps.com/thepits