john@moncol.UUCP (John Ruschmeyer) (06/12/85)
My boss and I were discussing an interesting topic and I thought I'd share it with the net: With the decreasing price of UNIX-based micros and the availability of packages such as Lauren Weinstein's UUCP for MS-DOS, it is becoming easily possible to have a "personal" computer acting as a net node. What I was wondering was whether anyone had given thought to the implications this has for the net? I have heard several possible scenarios for the future of the net, but none have ever mentioned this possibility. What happens when the Ken Arndts and Frank Adrians of the net cease to be random users and become sites? From what I have seen of the USENET documentation, this has never been mentioned. Does this mean that someone with the right make of computer needs nothing more than the right software and a feed to become a node? If nothing else, how do you name such a site and what do you put as an organization? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well, it beats the "New Coke" discussion. -- Name: John Ruschmeyer US Mail: Monmouth College, W. Long Branch, NJ 07764 Phone: (201) 222-6600 x366 UUCP: ...!vax135!petsd!moncol!john ...!princeton!moncol!john ...!pesnta!moncol!john Silly Quote: "I wanted to call it 'Nautical Lady' and Fred wanted to call it 'Queen of the Sea'. So we took the first three letters of my name and the last three letters of his."
root@wlcrjs.UUCP (Randy Suess) (06/14/85)
>packages such as Lauren Weinstein's UUCP for MS-DOS, it is becoming easily >possible to have a "personal" computer acting as a net node. > >What I was wondering was whether anyone had given thought to the >implications this has for the net? > >What happens when the Ken Arndts and Frank Adrians of the net cease to >be random users and become sites? >-- >Name: John Ruschmeyer Well, I guess you can call this system a "personal net node" It is my home 'puter and is all mine and It has no affiliation with any company or official orginization. chi-net has about 300 part time users from across the country with complete freedom on the system and unrestricted access to news. I have not seen many/any complaints from net users about messages originating from here. We (the poor, overworked sa's) keep a eye on postings, and over a year and a half of net participation, have never had reason to question a posting. If I did not have this sytem connected to the net, my job would be a lot more difficult because of all the good info/help I get from the various groups. I have been able to help various people requesting assistance or code, so I feel that besides providing access to UN*X and the net to people who are interested, but have no company/university connections, this system is a useful "personal node" for myself and hopefully to the net community. .. that's the biz, sweetheart .. Randy Suess Chi-Net - Public Access UN*X (312) 545 7535 (h) (312) 283 0559 (system) {ihnp4|ihldt}!wlcrjs!randy
sommers@topaz.ARPA (Mamaliz @ The Soup Kitchen) (06/14/85)
In article <381@moncol.UUCP> john@moncol.UUCP writes: > >With the decreasing price of UNIX-based micros and the availability of >packages such as Lauren Weinstein's UUCP for MS-DOS, it is becoming easily >possible to have a "personal" computer acting as a net node. > >What I was wondering was whether anyone had given thought to the >implications this has for the net? I have heard several possible scenarios >for the future of the net, but none have ever mentioned this possibility. > One of the computers that we have at home (mama) (alternates between a PC-AT and a NBI U!) is a net node, and we will probably put another one on the net permanently. We use these computers in our work, and find that we have many of the same communication needs as larger sites. I want my mail to come to whatever machine I am working on. Interrupting work to check for mail, or having to kludge large file transfers is not for me. We have not moved any news software to these machines. Disk space is just too precious a commodity. >What happens when the Ken Arndts and Frank Adrians of the net cease to >be random users and become sites? I think you might be confusing the USENET and netnews. The net is a lot more then netnews. They will probably be able to deal with their mail more efficiently. I doubt that they would even bother to install netnews software....I know I can't spare any disk space on a 45 meg disk for flaming. They probably already have terminals at home, does this make them sites? > >From what I have seen of the USENET documentation, this has never been >mentioned. Does this mean that someone with the right make of computer >needs nothing more than the right software and a feed to become a node? Probably. I don't think anybody has set themselves up as god to say who is and isn't going to be on the Net. This isn't Arpa after all. > >If nothing else, how do you name such a site and what do you put as an >organization? How do you name any site? You look for an available name that you like. Organization lines would probably be easier to come up with. liz sommers mama!liz -- liz sommers uucp: ...{harvard, seismo, ut-sally, sri-iu, ihnp4!packard}!topaz!sommers arpa: sommers@rutgers
john@moncol.UUCP (John Ruschmeyer) (06/16/85)
]From: sommers@topaz.ARPA (Mamaliz @ The Soup Kitchen) ]Organization: The NJ Home for Perverted Hackers ]Message-ID: <2283@topaz.ARPA> ] ]>What happens when the Ken Arndts and Frank Adrians of the net cease to ]>be random users and become sites? ] ]I think you might be confusing the USENET and netnews. The net is a lot ]more then netnews. They will probably be able to deal with their mail ]more efficiently. I doubt that they would even bother to install netnews ]software....I know I can't spare any disk space on a 45 meg disk for ]flaming. They probably already have terminals at home, does this make ]them sites? I have to admit I have made the common mistake of equating USENET and netnews. From the responses I have seen, there are a number of mail-only sites which could be considered "personal" netnodes. Let's restrict the discussion,then to the idea of a "personal" netnews site. I am sure that there are many users (students, etc.) who do not really use/need the electronic mail and file transfer capability of USENET, but who just read the news. In this sense, the net is nothing more than a large version of a BBS or Compuserve. Let's say that one of these people suddenly finds himself cut from the net. (gets a job at a non-UNIX shop, site becomes mail-only, etc.) It is not unreasonable for this person to go out, buy a 7300 or an XT running XENIX, find himself a feed, and have a few groups forwarded to him. This scenario was what I originally intended to discuss. If nothing else, a large number of such sites would tend to increase the load on the sites feeding them. -- Name: John Ruschmeyer US Mail: Monmouth College, W. Long Branch, NJ 07764 Phone: (201) 222-6600 x366 UUCP: ...!vax135!petsd!moncol!john ...!princeton!moncol!john ...!pesnta!moncol!john Silly Quote: "He doesn't do anything right... He's saving the Old Pepsi." - Johnny Carson New COKE- the refreshment that pauses.
toby@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Toby Harness) (06/16/85)
In article <> john@moncol.UUCP (John Ruschmeyer) writes: >Let's restrict the discussion.... In this sense, the net is nothing more >than a large version of a BBS or Compuserve. > >Let's say that one of these people suddenly finds himself cut from the net. >(gets a job at a non-UNIX shop, site becomes mail-only, etc.) It is not >unreasonable for this person to go out, buy a 7300 or an XT running XENIX, >find himself a feed, and have a few groups forwarded to him. > >This scenario was what I originally intended to discuss. If nothing else, >a large number of such sites would tend to increase the load on the sites >feeding them. You`re the sa for a Usenet site. Someone asks you for a feed to his personal machine. News is running what, something like 40 megabytes a week? Even a fraction of that is a lot of traffic. So what do you do first? You offer him/her/it a login on your machine to read news. If you can`t give a login id to this person, then you probably shouldn`t give them a uucp connection. Toby Harness Ogburn/Stouffer Center, University of Chicago ...ihnp4!gargoyle!toby
root@wlcrjs.UUCP (Randy Suess) (06/17/85)
In article <490@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> toby@gargoyle.UUCP (Toby Harness) writes: > >You`re the sa for a Usenet site. Someone asks you for a feed to his personal >machine. News is running what, something like 40 megabytes a week? Even >a fraction of that is a lot of traffic. So what do you do first? You offer >him/her/it a login on your machine to read news. If you can`t give a login >id to this person, then you probably shouldn`t give them a uucp connection. > >Toby Harness Ogburn/Stouffer Center, University of Chicago Or, like this site, you make a deal with your feed that you will then feed another 2 or more sites and take a little load off of him/her/it. .. that's the biz, sweetheart .. Randy Suess Chi-Net - Public Access UN*X (312) 545 7535 (h) (312) 283 0559 (system) {ihnp4|ihldt}!wlcrjs!randy
lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (06/17/85)
There's a major reason why people will tend to want personal nodes rather than simple logins. With a personal node, they have most of the mail/news handling software on their local machine and often have the data flowing in when they're not around. This way they don't have to handle all the messages at relatively low speeds--they can instead operate at very fast local speeds with their own fast local editors. It makes a BIG difference. I could never handle the mail/news load I have now (even though I've cut way back on news) if I wasn't doing it locally. Even 2400 bps seems like a snail's pace for reading messages... --Lauren--
john@moncol.UUCP (John Ruschmeyer) (06/17/85)
>From: toby@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Toby Harness) >Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science >Message-ID: <490@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> > >You`re the sa for a Usenet site. Someone asks you for a feed to his personal >machine. News is running what, something like 40 megabytes a week? Even >a fraction of that is a lot of traffic. So what do you do first? You offer >him/her/it a login on your machine to read news. If you can`t give a login >id to this person, then you probably shouldn`t give them a uucp connection. Well, moncol is something of a well-connected leaf with somewhat limited resources (at least for now). In our case, I might point such a person to the people who do our feed. (Alternately, I might look into one of the fixes to inews which sends articles from where they reside.) Also, the 40 Mb figure seems a tad high. We devote approx. 10 Mb to news. We receive a full news feed. Most articles are expired after one week, with some high-volume groups (net.sources, net.flame, net.politics, etc.) being expired after 3 days. We have only had problems 4 times in 7 months of operation with one of those being because of a corrupted history file. A personal netnews site would probably only want a small number of groups and wouls expire them much faster. Also, the operator would probably resort to printing out interesting articles or archiving them to floppy. I figure 3-5 meg would be more than adequate for such a site. -- Name: John Ruschmeyer US Mail: Monmouth College, W. Long Branch, NJ 07764 Phone: (201) 222-6600 x366 UUCP: ...!vax135!petsd!moncol!john ...!princeton!moncol!john ...!pesnta!moncol!john Silly Quote: "He doesn't do anything right... He's saving the Old Pepsi." - Johnny Carson New COKE- the refreshment that pauses.
keithd@cadovax.UUCP (Keith Doyle) (06/18/85)
[...]
What about the possibility of some of the local services (CompuServe,
the Source etc.) acting as net-nodes? Are there ethical problems here?
What other 'gotcha's' might exist?
Keith Doyle
# {ucbvax,ihnp4,decvax}!trwrb!cadovax!keithdavolio@decuac.UUCP (Frederick M. Avolio) (06/18/85)
In article <388@moncol.UUCP>, john@moncol.UUCP (John Ruschmeyer) writes: > I have to admit I have made the common mistake of equating USENET and > netnews... > Let's restrict the discussion,then to the idea of a "personal" netnews > site. I am sure that there are many users (students, etc.) who do not > really use/need the electronic mail and file transfer capability of USENET, > but who just read the news. Actually, USENET is define by paths over which news (net.announce) is "transmitted." But everyone knows what is meant when one refers to a "usenet" address (when they really mean INTERNET, UUCP, Enet, etc.) even if that is incorrect. And people "who just read the news" do use the "file transfer capability" and if they ever need to reply, they use the mail. So, you cannot really divorce these areas. There is and will be a problem with addressing as more and more sites "hook up." Whether they are personal computers or 8600s, the same problems exist. We will be (and are) seeing an explosion of growth as more and more people hook up their workstations or PCs to larger machines on a network. (We've seen a tremendous growth on DEC's Enet as people hook up their PROs, microVAXen, and Rainbows.) A real problem begins to emerge as people name their machines and then attach to an existing network. Then you end up with 50 or so IBM-PCs named "peanut", bunches of VAXen named KIM or ERNIE, and a whole lot of other duplicated names (gizmo, stripe, osiris, vortex). If this subject interests you, you might be interested in the discussion about addressing going on in net.mail (although it may be dormant -- but probably not dead -- at this time). -Fred
mike@peregrine.UUCP (Mike Wexler) (06/22/85)
> There's a major reason why people will tend to want personal nodes > rather than simple logins. ... > Even 2400 bps seems like a snail's pace for reading messages... > > --Lauren-- For those of you that have dial up asynchrous modems, there is a relatively unknown product available. It is called an accelerator. It does three very useful things. 1. It huffman encodes all transmissions to increase transmission speed. 2. It does error checking and correction. 3. It does speed conversion. It costs about $1000 dollars(you need one at each end). And is made by a company named Telebyte. We have two of them and love them. It makes remote demos possible. Not only can you go through pbx's, if someone picks up the phone you don't get junk on the screen(if they hang it up quick enough so that the modems don't drop carrier, you will notice this only as a slowing down of transmission. By the way I don't sell them but if I looked it up I might be able to find the name of our local(Southern California) distributor. -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mike Wexler(trwrb!pertec!peregrine!mike) | Send all flames to: 15530 Rockfield, Building C | trwrb!pertec!peregrine!nobody Irvine, Ca 92718 | They will then be given the (714)855-3923 | consideration they are due.
sean@ukma.UUCP (Sean Casey) (06/25/85)
In article <136@peregrine.UUCP> mike@peregrine.UUCP (Mike Wexler) writes: >For those of you that have dial up asynchrous modems, there is >a relatively unknown product available. It is called an accelerator. >It does three very useful things. >1. It huffman encodes all transmissions to increase transmission speed. >2. It does error checking and correction. >3. It does speed conversion. >It costs about $1000 dollars(you need one at each end). And is made by >a company named Telebyte. We have two of them and love them. It makes >remote demos possible. Not only can you go through pbx's, if someone >picks up the phone you don't get junk on the screen(if they hang it up >quick enough so that the modems don't drop carrier, you will notice One really doesn't need one of these. We run all our news through compress and uncompress. It uses Lempel-Ziv compression, which gives better compression than Huffman codes. Compress is free for the asking, and since we have the source, it is completely under our control. If we want to send compressed news to someone, we simply give them the program. This way, neither end has to buy a special purpose modem. Our cheapo Racal-Vadics don't have error correction, but given the same premise that they aren't interrupted sufficiently to drop carrier, the software handles the error correction within the protocol. "The ability to choke people remotely is insignificant compared to the power of Software." - not Darth Vader -- - Sean Casey UUCP: sean@ukma or - Department of Mathematics {cbosgd,anlams,hasmed}!ukma!sean - University of Kentucky ARPA: ukma!sean@ANL-MCS.ARPA
keith@motel6.UUCP (Keith Packard) (06/27/85)
In article <695@vortex.UUCP> lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) writes: >There's a major reason why people will tend to want personal nodes >rather than simple logins. With a personal node, they have most of the >mail/news handling software on their local machine and often have the >data flowing in when they're not around. This way they don't have >to handle all the messages at relatively low speeds--they can instead >operate at very fast local speeds with their own fast local >editors. It makes a BIG difference. I could never handle the mail/news >load I have now (even though I've cut way back on news) if I wasn't >doing it locally. Even 2400 bps seems like a snail's pace for reading >messages... > >--Lauren-- I agree. I just got my personal net-node working this week. Previously I was reading news through a 1200 baud modem, wading through the headers and waiting for interesting bits to be displayed was the pits. Now all of my news arrives after 2am. Although that link is still 1200 baud, the overhead of rn is not involved and the stuff is compressed - giving it a much greater effective speed. Although I only have a few meg of space for news, I simply expire news more than three days old - when you go on vacation for two weeks do you bother to read the paper when you return? I suspect new owners of small unix engines will probably do similar things; hook their machines up to the one at work to receive news at night. I'll bet their employers would be happy to use a few extra cpu cycles at 4am rather than have their employees waste time at work playing with the network. Keith ...!tektronix!reed!motel6!keith And still only $17.95 a night!