news server question 3187

First lets note that your level of expertise is significantly higher than average, which means 1) the maintenance time is probably not significant for you, but would be for the average person, and 2) you have significant ability to provide work arounds for any problems that crop up.

Regardless, you necessarily do have an increase in maintenance and failure rates, even if they are not significant in your particular case, simply because you have added maintenance and equipment that those using a remote server don't have at all.

However, a simple DSL isn't enough bandwidth for a full news feed, nor are you likely to have enough disk space for one. That means you necessarily have a partial feed. The effect of is that a grossly different situation, compared to a person who is using a remote server, occurs when you want to view articles in a new newsgroup that you are currently not getting. You have to jump through whatever hoops are necessary from your news feed (and that might vary from almost nothing to considerable) to get access to the new newsgroup, and then you have to download a batch of files to read anything. Compared to the simple add a new group and update that the user of a remote server does with only a newsreader, that is a significant bit of time and effort, and probably results in a reluctance to actually ever do it.

On a DSL, if you have a good feed, you probably don't see much of an increase in propagation latency, buttuming you don't try to approach a full newsfeed level.

I think it is very much a case of your mileage might vary, and for the average person it might be fairly high.

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