jsq@ut-sally.UUCP (John Quarterman) (04/20/84)
.\" tbl networks.ms | itroff -ms
.\" tbl networks.ms | nroff -ms | col > networks.doc
.nr PO 1i
.TL
Notable Computer Networks
.FS
Posted to net.sources on USENET, available as networks.doc or networks.ms
from ut-sally.ARPA by anonymous ftp (login anonymous, password guest).
It's basically a handout for new users that some people have thought
might be of interest elsewhere.
.FE
.AU
John Quarterman
jsq@ut-sally.ARPA jsq@ut-sally.CSNET
jsq@ut-sally.UUCP ihnp4!ut-sally!jsq
84/04/18
.AI
Department of Computer Sciences
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas, 78712 USA
.hy 0
.PP
This is a list of notable computer networks in the United States.
Its purpose is to acquaint people with what networks are out there
and to give some idea of how they differ:
it is not intended to be exhaustive and it is not a manual, just an indication.
Where sources are quoted verbatim they are credited.
Most such quotes came from a discussion in HUMAN-NETS
(as the ARPANET mailing list is known; fa.human-nets to USENET).
Most of the articles have been shortened but are otherwise unchanged.
.PP
Where an access method from the DARPA Internet, CSNET, or the UUCP mail
network is known, it is listed.
There are numerous networks outside of the USA (such as Canada's
DATAPAC), but they are not listed here due to lack of information or space.
.PP
The standard reference for the theory of computer networks is still
\fBComputer Networks\fP by Andrew S. Tannenbaum.
.DS L
.if n .nr PO 0
.TS
center ;
l c c c c l .
network type ser- hosts speed/ address
vices relia- (user@host.domain)
bility
_
DARPA Internet ?i T-d lfm-o 800+ 6/9 u@h.ARPA
ARPANET RI T-d lfm-o 180 6/9 u@h.ARPA
MILNET MI T-d lfm-o 188 6/9 u@h.ARPA
XEROX internet Ci ?-2 lfm-o ?000 6/9 u.registry@XEROX.ARPA
PDNs
ADP Autonet P- X-- lfm-- ? 4/9 ?
CompuServe P- X-d lfm-- ? 6/9 ?
GTE Telenet P- Xpd lfm-- ? 6/9 ?
Tymnet P- X-- lfm-- ? 6/9 ?
Uninet P- X-- lfm-- ? 6/9 ?
CSNET Ri Cp1 --m-- 100 4/9 u%h.csnet@csnet-relay.ARPA
u%h.csnet@rand-relay.ARPA
CSNET/TELENET u@h.ARPA
MAILNET R- Cp2 --m-- 15 ?/? u%h.mailnet@mit-multics.ARPA
BITNET ?- V-d ?fm?? 50 ?/? u%h.BITNET@Berkeley.ARPA
DEC C- D-4 lfm-o 2000 ?/? u@h.DEC
u%h.DEC@decwrl.ARPA
UUCP
transport A- Up- -fm-o 2000? 3/4 not applicable
mail A- Up4 --m-- 1900 3/3 u@h.UUCP
ha!...!hz!h!u
USENET news A? *p4 ---n- 1000 4/7 not applicable
.TE
.DE
.if n .nr PO 1i
.if n .po 1i
.IP "Types:"
.IP administration
.br
C: Commercial, i.e., internal to a private company
P: Public Data Network, i.e., a common carrier
R: Research (e.g. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or
National Science Foundation or University)
M: Military (e.g. Defense Data Network)
A: Anarchic (mixed commercial and research with no central control)
.IP internet
.br
i: an internet (interconnection of multiple physical networks using
the same transport protocols)
I: part of the DARPA Internet (the oldest internet, except maybe XEROX's)
.IP "transport layer"
.br
T: TCP/IP
C: CSNET: TCP/IP (ARPANET); TCP/IP on X.25 (TELENET); MMDF (Phonenet)
X: X.25
V: VNET
D: DECNET
U: UUCP
.IP speed
.br
p: most links are ordinary speed phone lines
.IP scope
.br
d: domestic USA only (or mostly)
#: a digit indicating the number of continents reached
.IP "Services:"
.br
l: remote login; f: file transfer; m: mail; n: news; o: other
.IP "Hosts:"
.br
The number of hosts given is as close an approximation as could be
found (84.03.28), but all these networks are growing.
Certain networks, in particular UUCP and USENET, prefer the
term site to the term host.
.IP "Speed/reliability:"
.br
The measures given are on a scale of 1-10 (low to high) and are
purely subjective, though most people with experience with the networks
involved would probably agree with the relative rankings.
.IP "Address:"
.br
The addresses given are templates for ones that could be used to reach
a user on the indicated network from a host connected
to both the DARPA Internet (and thereby to CSNET) and the UUCP mail network.
Gateways between networks in certain domains are a touchy political
subject which is not addressed for certain cases.
.SH
Domains
.PP
In an address like \fBjsq@ut\-sally.ARPA\fP, ARPA is the domain name;
the name of the network \fIut\-sally\fP is a part of is ARPANET, not ARPA.
.PP
Domains are administrative:
they do not refer to specific physical networks.
Domains are registered with the Internet Network Information Center.
The only current official domain name is ARPA, which applies
to all the networks in the DARPA Internet, including ARPANET, MILNET,
and all the ethernets, token rings, and other local networks using TCP/IP
and connected to either of the above networks through gateways.
The DDN domain will appear in the next year or so and will apply to MILNET
and local networks connected to it.
The UUCP domain, while not official, is widely used, as are CSNET,
MAILNET, BITNET, and DEC.
.PP
The domain scheme is not fully implemented yet, and only really applies
to mail at the moment where it applies at all.
Details can be found in several ARPANET RFCs.
.DS L
.na
.TS
center ;
l l l ltw(3i) .
RFC897 Feb 84 Postel T{
Domain Name System
Implementation Schedule
T}
RFC883 Nov 83 Mockapetris T{
Domain Names \-
Implementation Specification
T}
RFC882 Nov 83 Mockapetris T{
Domain Names \-
Concepts and Facilities
T}
RFC881 Nov 83 Postel T{
The Domain Names
Plan and Schedule
T}
RFC822 Aug 82 Crocker T{
Standard for the Format of
ARPA Internet Text Messages
T}
.TE
.ad
.DE
See below under DARPA Internet for how to get these RFCs.
.SH
DARPA Internet
.PP
The offspring of the old ARPANET, all running TCP/IP and related protocols,
connected through gateways, and with a common name space.
There is a Network Information Center at SRI (host \fIsri\-nic\fP) which
currently keeps track of all hosts, but plans are being made to
divide the Internet into domains, each with its own name servers.
.PP
While the two main constituents are ARPANET and MILNET
(each with about 180 hosts), there are numerous
local ethernets, token rings, etc. at universities and private companies
which are part of the Internet.
Frequently such a local network will not have all its host names
listed with NIC, preferring instead to maintain a mail gateway
that allows one known host to forward mail to others on the local net.
Outsiders must somehow just know the appropriate internal address
until domain name servers are functional.
This makes the real size of the Internet hard to judge, but there
are more than 800 hosts on it.
.PP
Services include remote login (telnet), file transfer (FTP), mail (SMTP),
and numerous other smaller services (date, time, system status, Internet
directory, etc.).
Reliability is very high.
Speed suffers during peak periods and telnet can be painful then,
but mail always gets through in a reasonable amount of time,
usually minutes.
.PP
Every Internet host is supposed to support a command called whois
that can be used to look up directory information.
Failing that, it is possible to telnet to \fIsri\-nic\fP and
type WHOIS.
Another useful command on \fIsri\-nic\fP is NIC, which allows
searches of a larger database (which always seems to be out of
date, unfortunately).
There is also a printed directory.
.PP
A great deal of information can be obtained by anonymous ftp
(login anonymous, password guest) from \fIsri\-nic\fP.
The specifications for most Internet protocols are on-line
in the <RFC> directory, and the current host tables are in the
<NETINFO> directory.
RFC is short for Request for Comments and is used for historical reasons.
Many RFCs related to mail and domains have also been posted to net.sources
on USENET.
.PP
ARPANET and MILNET hosts are all connected to a subnet of IMPs
(Interface Message Processors),
which are then connected to each other over 56Kbaud dedicated lines
plus a few satellite links (e.g. to Hawaii and Norway).
.IP "ARPANET"
.br
The original long-haul packet-switched computer network, funded by
the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which has since changed
its name to Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
It started as an experiment in 1974 and worked so well it had developed
into a research utility (run by the Defense Communications Agency, or DCA)
by the end of 1983, when it was split into
MILNET, a production military network, and ARPANET, which reverted
to research.
Access is limited officially to organizations doing research funded
by federal money.
Note the name of the network is ARPANET; the name of its domain is ARPA.
.IP "MILNET"
.br
The Defense Data Network the development of which was the direct goal
of the ARPANET research; it split from the ARPANET in October 1983.
It is connected to the ARPANET by mail bridges, i.e., gateways that
ordinarily pass only mail and not other traffic (such as remote
login or file transfer).
Non-mail access is mostly limited to the military and defense contractors.
.SH
XEROX internet
.PP
The name of the gateway from the ARPANET to the Xerox Grapevine has
changed from PARC-MAXC to XEROX since the following mail message was sent.
.DS
Date: 6 Jan 84 17:53:05 PST (Friday)
From: Jef Poskanzer <Poskanzer.PA@PARC-MAXC.ARPA>
Subject: Re: The Plethora of Networks
.DE
.PP
Here's a network you left out: the XEROX Internet.
Most outsiders tend to overlook the XEROX Internet, for various reasons:
.IP
o only a small proportion of the traffic is gatewayed
to or from other networks;
o what little gatewaying there is gets done almost invisibly;
o the name difficulty.
(I'm told that XEROX used ``Internet'' first, but that doesn't matter much now.)
.PP
...
.PP
The mail transport mechanism within the XEROX Internet is called Grapevine.
Grapevine addresses look like "<user>.<registry>".
If the registry you're sending to is the one you are in, you can leave it
off, and the address becomes merely "<user>".
Registries are geographic \- the two largest are "PA" (Palo Alto), for Northern
California, and "ES" (El Segundo), for Southern California.
.PP
To send mail in from the ARPAnet, the address looks like
"<user>.<registry>@PARC-MAXC".
If the registry is PA, you can leave it off, giving "<user>@PARC-MAXC".
This is what I mean by invisible
gatewaying \- to outsiders, it looks like all 2000 of us Xeroids
receive our mail on poor little PARC-MAXC.
Not so \- it's just a gateway.
I think the source of the confusion is that people are used
to explicitly specifying a host for the mail to be delivered to, as
well as a user on that host.
Grapevine's mail servers are politely invisible.
.PP
Sending mail out to the ARPAnet is as easy as pi.
"ARPA" is just another registry, so I just say "<user>@<host>.ARPA".
Or if I'm really lazy, I can just say "<user>@<host>",
since anything with at atsign automatically goes to the ARPAnet.
.DS
Date: 19 Mar 84 19:30:09 PST (Monday)
Subject: Re: networks summary
To: jsq@ut-sally.ARPA (John Quarterman)
From: Jef Poskanzer <Poskanzer.PA@PARC-MAXC.ARPA>
.DE
.PP
That sounds fine to me.
Two quibbles:
(1) The actual number of Xerox
Internet Grapevine mailing addresses is closer to 5000 than 2000 \- my
counting method was bogus somehow, and one of the Grapevine implementors
corrected me.
(2) There are actually far more devices on the internet
than there are Grapevine addresses, probably more like 10000; however,
neither "ethernet devices" nor "Grapevine addresses" corresponds very
closely to the usual meaning of the word "hosts".
.SH
Public Data Networks
.PP
In addition to the summary of five prominent networks below,
Walt Haas keeps a list of contact information for public data networks
worldwide.
.DS
Date: Mon 9 Jan 84 15:52:34-MST
From: Walt <Haas@UTAH-20.ARPA>
Subject: Yet More Networks
.DE
.PP
There are five
public data networks actively serving the US and more in the works.
The five national PDNs are all common carriers, like Greyhound \- that
is, anybody who pays the fare can use them.
They all provide an X.25
interface, which gives a virtual circuit service \- there is as yet no
international standard for mail or FTP.
All provide a virtual
terminal capability via the X.3/X.29 PAD standards.
They all compete
vigorously for business, and I'm sure I'll hear about it immediately
if I have left out anybody's capability.
Here (in alphabetical order)
are the five established PDNs:
.DS
ADP Autonet
175 Jackson Plaza
Ann Arbor, MI 48106
(313) 769-6800
.DE
.PP
Besides the US, has satellite links to London, England and Delft,
The Netherlands.
Maximum internal speed is 9600 bps.
Nodes are PDP-11s with KMC-11 front end microprocessors.
Internal protocol was described to me as derivative
of the old ARPAnet protocols.
.DS
CompuServe Incorporated
Network Services Division
5000 Arlington Centre Blvd.
P.O. Box 20212
Columbus, OH 43220
(614) 457-8600
.DE
.PP
Internal speeds to 56k bps.
Nodes are PDP-11s with 6809 microprocessor front ends.
Internal protocol is DDCMP.
.DS
GTE Telenet Communications Corp.
8229 Boone Boulevard
Vienna, VA 22180
(703) 442-1000
.DE
.PP
Internal speeds to 56k bps.
Nodes are arrays of 6502s in a redundant, load sharing configuration.
Internal protocol conforms to CCITT Recommendation X.75.
Supports automatic recovery of virtual circuit when a node fails during a call.
Built by some of the folks from BBN who built the ARPAnet originally.
Provides a mail service called Telemail.
.DS
Tymnet, Inc.
2710 Orchard Parkway
San Jose, CA 95134
(408) 946-4900
.DE
.PP
Internal speeds to 56k bps.
Nodes are arrays of "Tymnet Engines"
in a redundant, load sharing configuration.
The Tymnet Engine
is a Tymnet-built 32-bit processor derived from the Interdata 732,
re-engineered for extremely high MTBF.
Internal protocol is a
unique Tymnet design which repacketizes inside the network and
does flow control at the byte level, like TCP.
Supports automatic
recovery of virtual circuit when a node fails during a call.
Provides a mail service called OnTyme.
.DS
Uninet
United Telecom Communications, Inc.
2525 Washington
Kansas City, MO 64108
(816) 221-2444
.DE
.PP
Internal speeds to 56k bps.
Nodes are Modcomp 7830s.
Internal protocol is a Uninet-designed virtual circuit protocol, on top
of HDLC.
.SH
CSNET
.PP
This network consists of three parts logically treated as one network:
Phonenet, Telenet, and ARPANET.
Phonenet is constructed of two relay hosts (currently csnet-relay and
rand-relay) which poll various other CSNET hosts for mail.
These relays are also ARPANET hosts, and provide mail gatewaying to
the ARPANET.
For those who want better (faster) service than Phonenet can provide,
TELENET connections are available.
This gets a leased line and direct access to the ARPANET via the Internet.
.PP
The address for information about CSNET is
.DS
cic@csnet-cic.CSNET
or
cic%csnet-cic.CSNET@csnet-relay.ARPA
.DE
so direct questions there rather than to Michael O'Brien,
even though he wrote the following useful summary.
The CSNET directory, containing much information about CSNET hosts
and people with mailboxes on them, is accessible by telnet
for those with Internet access:
telnet to csnet-sh and log in as user ns with no password,
then type help.
.PP
A good article on CSNET is ``The Computer Science Research Network CSNET:
A History And Status Report'' by Douglas Comer, page 747,
\fBCommunications of the ACM\fP, Volume 26, Number 10, October 1983.
.DS
Date: Friday, 6 Jan 1984 10:34-PST
Subject: More on CSNET
From: obrien@rand-unix
.DE
.PP
To expand on CSNET: It is currently funded by the NSF, and
expects to become self-supporting during the next few years, based on
member fees.
These fees are:
.DS L
.TS
center ;
r l .
$30,000 commercial sites
10,000 government and not-for-profit
5,000 educational
.TE
.DE
.PP
These fees may be reduced by petitioning for a reduction in
the case of small outfits, and are lower for people who already have a
net connection via Arpanet.
.PP
The CSNET membership list as of Dec. 1 shows:
.DS L
.TS
center;
r l .
85 Phonenet sites
6 Telenet sites
18 Arpanet sites
4 CSNET-owned hosts
.TE
.DE
.PP
Not all of these sites are operational yet, though most are.
Phonenet sites are served by two Relay machines, which call them up
nightly to exchange mail.
Text files may be automatically transferred
using MMDF-based mail-receipt programs, though this is obviously not
the best way to do business.
Bandwidth here is limited by the
1200-baud phone lines as well as by the capacities of the Relays.
Mailing-list stuff can be handled OK, but Usenet traffic breaks the
Relays by sheer load.
.PP
Telenet sites run TCP/IP on top of X.25 virtual circuits,
using software developed for CSNET at Purdue.
Personally I think this is hot stuff.
If your phone bills are $1500/month, you can run
equivalent traffic over Telenet for about $1200/month, last time we
figured it out.
And, you get full Internet connectivity and services into the bargain.
Because the drop lines from Telenet to the host are
really only 9600, 4800, or 1200 baud dedicated phone lines,
instantaneous bandwidth is not as good as Arpanet, but it's not bad.
And, you and the rest of the world will be hard-put to tell that
you're not on Arpanet directly, except you don't have to deal with the DoD.
This software really works, and works well.
.PP
Arpanet sites run standard Arpanet software \- no change.
.PP
In addition to simple net connectivity, CSNET brings the
benefits of centralized network management.
Basically this means that
if your mail isn't moving, you have experts to scream to, and they
really will work hard to fix the problem.
There are other benefits
such as ongoing mail system development, an automatic nameserver, and
so forth.
.PP
Management of CSNET has recently been transferred away from
the contractor committees which built the net to a newly-formed
Executive Committee, which is overseeing the move from a research to a
service organization.
The two relay machines are moving to BBN \- it's
cheaper and easier to run a single computer center and communicate via
WATS lines than to spread out the Relay operations.
.SH
MAILNET
.PP
This is evidently a star-shaped phonenet which is reputed to use
MMDF (the CSNET phonenet software).
For information on a given host, send mail to
POSTMASTER%host.MAILNET@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA.
.DS L
.TS
tab(@), center ;
l l .
Carnegie-Mellon University @CARNEGIE.MAILNET
University of Chicago @UCHICAGO.MAILNET
Dickinson College @DICKINSON.MAILNET
University of Durham (U.K.) @DURHAM.MAILNET
EDUCOM @EDUCOM.MAILNET
Grinnell College @GRINNELL.MAILNET
Iowa State University @IOWA-STATE.MAILNET
Massachusetts Institute of Technology @MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
University of Michigan @UMICH-MTS.MAILNET
New Jersey Institute of Technology @NJIT-EIES.MAILNET
University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (U.K.)@NEWCASTLE.MAILNET
Northwestern University @NORTHWESTERN.MAILNET
Stanford University @STANFORD.MAILNET
Stockholm University QZ Computing Center@QZCOM.MAILNET
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute @RPI-MTS.MAILNET
.TE
.DE
.SH
BITNET
.PP
A collection of information on BITNET is maintained as
"dsk:common;bitnet\ info",
"dsk:common;bitnet\ arc",
on mit-mc.ARPA and mit-oz by Robert L. Krawitz,
ZZZ.RLK%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA, who also moderates the INFO-NETS mailing list.
The following paragraph is taken from "dsk:common;bitnet\ info":
.PP
Bitnet is a network of computers, mostly IBM machines running VM/SP
which seems to be IBM's main OS for their big mainframes.
However, there are plenty of VAXen running Unix or VMS, as well as a few other
machines running random systems.
There are, as of January 1984, about
150 machines on the net, representing about 40 or so (a rough
approximation) different sites, mainly universities.
The central host,
to whatever degree that is important, is CUNYVM, located at the City
University of New York.
Unfortunately, I don't have any contact names,
so if you want to find out hard info, you'll have to look around.
.DS
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 84 01:34:37 pst
From: fair%ucbarpa@Berkeley (Erik E. Fair)
Subject: Re: HUMAN-NETS Digest V7 #1
.DE
.PP
This is a network of IBM hosts, and seems to be built along the same
lines as the ARPANET (implicit addressing, dedicated lines, central
control) but not all the sites have the same capabilites.
Services supported:
MAIL, and FTP (for those sites that have RSCS).
Presently is about 50-60 sites.
Founded by CUNY, after they got IBM to cough up
the software that is used in the IBM internal VNET.
I have no idea how fast it goes.
Scope:
national.
.PP
To address someone on the BITNET from the ARPANET:
.DS
mail person%site.BITNET@BERKELEY
.DE
BERKELEY's mailer converts this to
.DS
G:SITE=PERSON
.DE
and it gets sent to UNIX G (in the UCB Computer Center), which in turn
sends it to the IBM 4341 (UCBVMA on the BITNET), and from there it
goes where it's supposed to...
.SH
DEC Engineering Network
.PP
Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC*)
.FS *
DEC and DECNET are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation.
.FE
has an internal engineering network
of more than 2000 hosts, international scope,
and with gateways to several other networks.
They appear to have settled on the domain name DEC, and there will be
subdomains.
.PP
There is a gateway between the UUCP mail network and DEC's network at
decwrl.UUCP and rhea.DEC which has, until recently, given mail passing into
the UUCP mail network return addresses that pretended everything
in the DEC domain was actually in the UUCP domain.
Since there are a few dozen site names intersections in the two
domains, that produced a fairly serious routing problem.
Fortunately, the DEC domain seems to be nearing complete implementation
within DEC, and the gateway now produces and accepts reasonable addresses.
Thus addresses of the form
.DS
...!...!decwrl!user%node.DEC
.DE
can be used from the UUCP network without worrying about mail getting
misdirected by those UUCP sites that rewrite UUCP addresses.
.PP
Decwrl is also connected to the TELENET part of CSNET and thus serves
as a gateway between the DEC and CSNET domains
and thereby to the rest of the world.
.DS
Date: 06-Jan-1984 1256
From: covert@castor.DEC (John Covert)
Subject: A bit more info on Digital's ENET
.DE
.PP
And second, I'd like to give a little more information on the Digital
ENET.
It is composed of systems running our DECNET software products,
first introduced about nine years ago.
.PP
DECNET is much more than a mail network.
It is a product built on a
layered network architecture (DNA) with lower, non-programmer
accessible data-link and routing layers, and higher, programmer
accessible, session layers.
.PP
It is similar to the ISO model on open systems interconnect.
Since it is older than that model, it does not correspond exactly, but will,
more and more, as time goes by and as the worldwide networks develop.
.PP
At the data-link level it can use synchronous or asynchronous lines of
any speed running DDCMP, public network lines running X.25, parallel
links running protocols specific to those devices, and Ethernet.
Using gateway products it can create gateway links into an IBM SNA
network.
.PP
At the user accessible layer, it is possible for any program to open a
transparent, full-duplex, channel to any other program on the same or
any other node in the network.
Programmers can take advantage of this
``network logical link'' to build any application they wish.
.PP
Various Digital supported protocols running on logical links are
host-to-host terminal connections, allowing a user at any node to act
as an interactive terminal on any other node, Mail, the Data Access
Protocol, (see next paragraph) and several others.
.PP
The DAP protocol is used to copy files, but it is much more than a
file copy protocol.
It permits a program on any system to access a
file on any other system as though that file were a local file.
In fact, VMS and RSX using the DAP routines buried in RMS permit a
nodename to be simply a part of a file spec used by any program.
.PP
DECNET does a bit more than implicit routing; it does dynamic path
routing.
As a result, given sufficient alternate paths, the loss of
an intermediate node does not affect the operation of traffic
currently routing through that node.
Dynamic path routing was first
made available in DECNET Phase III, offered for sale almost five years
ago.
.PP
...
.PP
Reassigning node numbers will not be complete for several months, and
not all systems will upgrade, so there may be a few systems which
require one intermediate hop from RHEA.
Many of these will have
definitions on RHEA making that transparent to the sender (though a
recipient would see the hop).
The rest should be directly addressable
from RHEA, whether located in the U.S., Canada, the Caribbean, Europe
(13 countries now), the Middle East, the Far East, or Australia.
(Remember, IBM is the only computer manufacturer larger than Digital.)
.SH
UUCP
.PP
The name UUCP is used for two different protocol levels,
contributing to the confusion produced by the close association
of UUCP with USENET.
.IP "UUCP transport"
.br
The name UUCP (
.UX
to Unix CoPy) originally applied to a transport
service used over dialups (1200 or 300 baud) or hardwired lines
(usually not higher than 9600 baud) between adjacent systems.
(The protocol is not limited to those speeds and can easily run
over much higher-speed links, but only low speed hardware links
were generally available.)
While file transfer appears to have been the original intent and main
use of UUCP, there was (and is) no facility for routing beyond adjacent systems
at the transport level.
There has never been any remote login facility associated with UUCP,
though the cu and tip programs are sometimes used over the same phone links.
.IP "UUCP mail"
.br
This network provides, without a doubt, the worst mail service of any named:
when mail was grafted on top of UUCP to form a mail network no routing
service and no method of error acknowledgement was provided; thus you
had to guess where to send your mail and hope it got there.
It is, nonetheless, extremely popular and growing rapidly.
This is attributable to two circumstances:
it is extremely easy to connect a machine to the UUCP mail network
(only one agreeable neighbor is needed); and UUCP mail is very closely
tied to USENET news, which provides a unique service.
The development of mail routers is helping, as well.
.PP
There is a movement afoot to make the UUCP mail network into a
domain acceptable for registration with the DARPA Internet.
This involves (among other things) development of name server software,
including software to create, distribute, and access routing databases
for the UUCP domain.
It will also be necessary to subdivide the UUCP domain into several
subdomains.
The coordinator of the effort is Mark Horton, ihnp4!cbosgd!mark,
614-860-4276.
.PP
Rick Kiessig, ihnp4!sun!idi!kiessig, plans to publish a UUCP mail directory
in May 1984 and is soliciting information, including your U.S. Mail
address.
.PP
Mailing lists similar to those long current on the ARPANET have recently
seen an upsurge of popularity on the UUCP mail network because they
permit one feature that USENET newsgroups cannot readily supply:
limited access.
.SH
USENET
.PP
Note that USENET is \fIqualitatively\fP different from all the others:
it is a news network, with articles sent by a flooding routing
algorithm to all nodes.
While the transport layer is UUCP for most links, numerous
others are used, including ethernets, berknets, and the DARPA Internet.
Mail addresses have no meaning on USENET:
mail related to USENET articles is usually sent via UUCP mail.
.PP
USENET combines the idea of mailing lists long used on the ARPANET
with bulletin board service as has existed for many years on TOPS-20
and other systems, adds a freedom of subject matter that
could never exist on the ARPANET, and reaches a more varied constituency.
While the result is often chaotic and inane ramblings it is quite popular.
.PP
There are somewhere around 1000 USENET hosts in the USA, Canada, Australia,
Korea, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, West Germany, Denmark,
Sweden, Norway, Greece, Korea, and probably other countries.
There is a directory and map of USENET maintained by a volunteer
(Karen Summers-Horton, map@cbosgd.UUCP) and posted to the newsgroup
net.news.map monthly.
A list of legitimate net-wide newsgroups is posted to net.news.map monthly.
Other volunteers keep statistics on the use of the various newsgroups
(all 200 or so of them) and frequency of posting by persons and sites
and post them to net.news.group.
There are two moderated newsgroups, net.announce and net.announce.newusers
(the current moderator is Mark Horton, mark@cbosgd.UUCP),
which attempt to get important announcements to everyone, but there is
no general central authority for USENET.
.PP
The name USENET is derived from USENIX, which is derived from
Unix User's Group, as USENIX was once known before trademark problems
caused a name change.
Unix is, of course, a pun on Multics.
.SH
Others
.PP
There are other widespread networks that are not publicly accessible.
IBM operates a very widespread and completely closed private network (VNET),
as doubtless do other private corporations.
Certain government agencies have networks for various purposes.
The government of almost every nation outside North America
controls practically all communications media directly, including
electronic mail and the like.
.PP
MCI mail is in such a state of flux at the moment that I have not attempted
to describe it.
.PP
The old TWX and TELEX networks still exist, though they appear to be
being superseded by TELETEX (especially in France).
The most widely distributed electronic communications network in the
world is still the telephone network, with hundreds of millions of nodes.
The most widely distributed communications network on this planet
is the physical mail network with probably more than a billion nodes.
--
John Quarterman, CS Dept., University of Texas, Austin, Texas 78712 USA
jsq@ut-sally.ARPA, jsq@ut-sally.UUCP, {ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!jsq