Paul Ferguson writes:
How would you feel if Pointcast slowly backed off and increased the time period between updates, but at the touch of a key or movement of the mouse it would go back to the "knob" setting? Obviously a low volume data feed like Pointcast may not be that big a load on the net but the heuristics (which do involve human factors) could probably be applied to a lot of other things like video feeds that will be bigger bandwidth consumers.
I think this sounds fine, but I don't think you need an RFC to dictate it. This would be a competitive advantage for an application, methinks.
This comment got me wondering, and I don't like where I wound up ... Would it be a competitive advantage? As far as responsible users go, it probably would. That brings up irresponsible users - users who don't care about their impact, and even worse hacker-type users who would deliberately bring down the net if they could ... how long before someone figures out how to make a server direct a Real Audio stream (or whatever) at someone else? The leverage for hackers could be enormous. -- Dick St.Peters, Gatekeeper, Pearly Gateway, Ballston Spa, NY stpeters@NetHeaven.com Owner, NetHeaven 518-885-1295/800-910-6671 Internet for Albany/Saratoga, Glens Falls, North Creek, & Lake Placid First Internet service based in the 518 area code