Biological Collections Gopher Stats

[Jim Croft]

Jim Beach writes:

> Here is a summary of activity at the Biodiversity and Biological
> Collections Gopher during 1993.  It provides some idea of the reach of
> Gopher and suggests the best time to use it is around 4:00-6:00
> a.m. US E.S.T.

Bragging again?  So who is counting?  I will resist the temptation to
get into a 'mine is bigger than yours' argument on this issue (not the
least reason for this is because it isn't!)

> TOTALS FOR SUMMARY PERIOD Jan  1 1993 TO Nov 17 1993
>
> Files Transmitted During Summary Period         63398
> Average Files Transmitted Daily                   158

This figure is appallingly low!  How can Dr Beach justify upgrading his
system with these paltry numbers...  His server could handle an order of
magnitude more use and hardly raise a sweat.  This summary report was
not a boast, but a _crie de coeur_ for more users and providers of
biodiversity gophers with heaps of taxonomic information.

If everyone out there who is not running a gopher client were to get one
(they are free and will not impinge on your organzation's budget), and
point it at huh.harvard.edu, and all the other taxonomic gophers out
there and springing up all over the place (or better still, get a gopher
server - these are free too - and put your own information on it as well
as making links all over the place), Jim might be able to get a new
machine.  Not only that, as the flow of scientific data and information
increases between institutions and researchers and the public, the
justification for existence of our hellishingly expensive and grossly
under-utilized biological collections increases - we are in the realm
of the multi-megabuck here.

In the interests of dispassionate analysis - not wishing to provoke an
nationalistic argument ;-) - here is Jim's list in decending order
of number of files sent.  As a member of the second-ranking non-US user
country of this gopher I would like to point out that although we were
responsible for only 1.43% of the files (cf. (not aff.!) Canada's 3.51%)
this represented 3.6% of the total information (cf. Canada's 4.78%).
Thus, the average file size demanded by Australians is 23,744 bytes,
almost twice as large as the Canadian's of 12,810 bytes - the only
possible interpretation for these statistics is that Australians are the
more serious and efficient users, in spite of what appears at first glance
to be a lower ranking.  Before John McNiel says anything, I wish to
categorically deny that Australians are just looking at the large
picture files of plants because they do not know how to read the words...

> Total Transfer Amount By Domain
>
>              Number Of    Number of     Average    Percent Of  Percent Of
> Domain Name  Files Sent   Bytes Sent   Xmit  Rate  Files Sent  Bytes Sent
> -----------  ----------  ------------  ----------  ----------  ----------
> US_Educational    31662     315769241                 49.94       52.91
> unresolved        15421      52964758                 24.32        8.88
> localhost          3634      41005309                  5.73        6.87
> Canada             2228      28542060                  3.51        4.78
> Non-Profit         1844      31488947                  2.91        5.28
> US_Government      1477      20131717                  2.33        3.37
> US_Commercial      1040      13077085                  1.64        2.19
> Australia           906      21512598                  1.43        3.60
> United_Kingdom      674       9677248                  1.06        1.62
> Sweden              597       6456519                  0.94        1.08
> Germany             491       7140531                  0.77        1.20
> Netherlands         411       6884048                  0.65        1.15
> Switzerland         276       5735553                  0.44        0.96
> Brazil              242       3380474                  0.38        0.57
> unc.edu             242       1827888                  0.38        0.31
> France              237       2370422                  0.37        0.40
> Finland             221       5993623                  0.35        1.00
> Chile               204       1014169                  0.32        0.17
> Taiwan              182       8813166                  0.29        1.48
> Italy               160       1019363                  0.25        0.17
> Network             154       1043618                  0.24        0.17
> Norway              107       1301766                  0.17        0.22
> Austria             101        197648                  0.16        0.03
> Japan               101       1464890                  0.16        0.25
> Mexico               88        841572                  0.14        0.14
> United_States        78        492500                  0.12        0.08
> US_Military          77        528597                  0.12        0.09
> Hungary              74        245980                  0.12        0.04
> Israel               71        599343                  0.11        0.10
> Hong_Kong            63       1309102                  0.10        0.22
> Poland               60        269172                  0.09        0.05
> Singapore            47        353267                  0.07        0.06
> Denmark              42        422774                  0.07        0.07
> South_Africa         35        762514                  0.06        0.13
> Korea_(South)        22        764801                  0.03        0.13
> Belgium              20        113590                  0.03        0.02
> New_Zealand          17        135652                  0.03        0.02
> Turkey               16        180457                  0.03        0.03
> Spain                15        302297                  0.02        0.05
> Iceland              14        243523                  0.02        0.04
> Czech_Republic       12        251438                  0.02        0.04
> Thailand             10         70877                  0.02        0.01
> Croatia               5         22956                  0.01        0.00
> Czechoslovakia        5          4495                  0.01        0.00
> India                 2          1908                  0.00        0.00
> Luxembourg            2          7424                  0.00        0.00
> Slovak_Republic       2          9751                  0.00        0.00
> Venezuela             2          1666                  0.00        0.00
> Costa_Rica            1         11308                  0.00        0.00
> Estonia               1           954                  0.00        0.00
> Greece                1          4297                  0.00        0.00
> International         1          2592                  0.00        0.00
> Ireland               1          8587                  0.00        0.00
> Portugal              1          1382                  0.00        0.00
> Slovenia              1          3291                  0.00        0.00


cheers

jim
___________________________________________________________________________
Jim Croft           [Herbarium CBG]               internet: jrc at anbg.gov.au
Australian National Botanic Gardens                  voice:  +61-6-2509 490
GPO Box 1777, Canberra, ACT 2601, AUSTRALIA            fax:  +61-6-2509 599
                          URL=http://155.187.10.12:80/people/croft.jim.html
______Biodiversity Directorate, Australian Nature Conservation Agency______