Perhaps this is finally a case for those little TOS bits in an IP header? Interactive stuff like Telnet traffic could go through a slow land line, whereas bulk traffic could go via satellite. I'm not sure how many TCP/IP stacks still set those bits; it may be necessary to have a router manipulate the bits after examining the port numbers of a connection. FYI, Planet Connect (and others) has been offering Usenet feeds via 18" dish for quite some time now. Stephen At 14:33 01-06-97 -0700, Paul A Vixie wrote:
High orbit, geosyncronous sattelites do not stand much of a chance against land lines as the latency on the links is quite high. [...]
Long latency is not automatically bad. It is bad for interactive traffic, but if the bandwidth is high enough to reduce congestion to zero, a large latency doesn't hurt bulky transfers at all. Netnews, for example, could be distributed via satellite without hurting anybody's lookers or feelers.