pyBoards.com

[Bengt Richter]

On Fri, 04 Jul 2003 18:30:22 -0400, Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:

>Aahz wrote:
>> 
>> In article <3F05C39D.3F65B89C at engcorp.com>,
>> Peter Hansen  <peter at engcorp.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >Google Groups likely takes its feed directly of a Usenet site, and Usenet
>> >in general suffers from large propagation delay.  It is that delay, caused
>> >by messages filtering slowly across the Usenet network, which leads to the
>> >"5 answers" problem, not Google Groups itself.
>> 
>> Actually, Google uses at least two or three feeds (including
>> stanford.edu, which has a super-competent news admin), and Usenet
>> propagation is actually little short of e-mail speeds these days,
>> depending on where you're located.
>
>That might be, but empirically I've seen posts that I've made take 
>hours to get there, and I've seen posts that were made to the mailing
>list (and copied to me directly) take hours to get there.  In both 
>cases, there is an "upwards" propagation delay towards whatever hosts
>Google is milking before stanford.edu or the others will see it...

Well, compare just in this thread how stuff got to me
(I broke paths with '\\' for clarity and removed return addresses):
===============================
Path: news.alt.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail
From: (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Hannu_Kankaanp=E4=E4?=)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python

Path: news.alt.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed2.news.rcn.net!rcn!nntp.abs.net\
!uunet!dca.uu.net!ash.uu.net!news.baymountain.com!not-for-mail
From: Paul McNett
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python

From: Peter Hansen
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
Path: news.alt.net!priapus.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!hermes.visi.com\
!feed2.news.rcn.net!rcn!elnk-atl-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!prodigy.com\
!rip!c03.atl99!cyclone2.usenetserver.com!newsfeeds-atl1!news.webusenet.com\
!newsfeed.on.tac.net!news.sentex.net!not-for-mail

Path: news.alt.net!priapus.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!petbe.visi.com\
!newspeer.monmouth.com!news-peer-east1.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net\
!newsfeed!panix!panix3.panix.com!not-for-mail
From: (Aahz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python

From: Peter Hansen
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
Path: news.alt.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed-east.nntpserver.com\
!nntpserver.com!chi1.webusenet.com!c03.atl99!cyclone2.usenetserver.com\
!newsfeeds-atl1!news.webusenet.com!newsfeed.on.tac.net!news.sentex.net!not-for-mail
===============================
Note that path from Peter was not the same both times.
Then, looking at one of my own posts in another thread:

Path: news.alt.net!oz.net!usenet
From: (Bengt Richter)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python

Regards,
Bengt Richter