OIG BBS demise and satelem

Allen Thomson (thomsona@netcom.com)
Wed, 10 Jun 1998 10:07:42 -0700 (PDT) 

I sent a note this morning describing the impending demise of the
OIG BBS to the person at JPL who has been hosting the satelem files 
on kilroy.jpl.nasa.gov. Noting that analysis of the situation is still 
in progress, I alerted him to the possibility that the satelem service 
might have to be scaled back, and asked,


AT: Would it be possible for you to give me user statistics (hits per
AT: week, number of different institutions, countries, etc.) for the
AT: satelem sets?  I'd like to be able to post these to SeeSat-L
AT: and use them in appeals to OIG, but if it might cause you
AT: a problem, I'll certainly understand.
AT: TIA

To which he has just responded,

>Hi Allen,

>Wow that's a bummer!  Well hopefully these numbers will help.
>I know there's a lot of folks that depend on this FTP site to
>download the elements and would really disrupt their source
>for them.

>This FTP site has been supplying elements ever since 1992 so
>it's a well established site and it's existance is all over
>the Internet so its loss would be noticable (hopefully a
>statement like this would be useful to OIG).

>I only have data from April 1st, but hopefully this will help.

>In April, we had 596 hits:
>Avg hits a day: 19.8
>Avg hits a week: 139
>Hits for entire month from
>- COM sites: 205
>- EDU sites: 79
>- GOV sites: 26
>- MIL sites: 9
>- NET sites: 142
>- ORG sites: 16
>the rest are outside US or unresolved IP addresses.

>In May, we had 582 hits:
>Avg hits a day: 18.7
>Avg hits a week: 131
>Hits for entire month from
>- COM sites: 163
>- EDU sites: 63
>- GOV sites: 22
>- MIL sites: 14
>- NET sites: 144
>- ORG sites: 17
>the rest are outside US or unresolved IP addresses.

>I hope this helps.  If you need further info, let me know.

So it looks as if something like 130 or 140 entities are getting
the satelem files, including ~10 .gov and .mil ones. Presumably
some of these make tertiary distribution, so the amplification
effect of having the elesets at kilroy is considerable.

As far as the burden on the OIG BBS goes, I telnet there twice
a week, ftp the raw files to my ISP at, typically, 35 to 40 kBps,
disconnect, and then download via modem to my local PC.
Total connect time to OIG is, I would estimate, under 15
minutes per week, and I try to do that mostly in the evenings.

It would help if OIG could provide more details on the technical
problems that are forcing them to shut down the BBS.