Physics:piner (08/13/82)
Once again we are seeing complaints about articles showing up more than once on the net. Sometimes this is due to people sending revised articles a second time. But often this is due to the fact that there is no unified network. What we have is a cross linked system with uucp, berknet, ARPA, and God only knows what else. With several different version of the news and mail programs running too just to make things more confusing. Several of the USEnet news groups are "gatewayed" to the ARPAnet. There they are sent out again. But lots of USEnet sites, get news from the ARPAnet. An example is ".space". On USEnet it is called "net.space", on ARPAnet it is "fa.space". If someone on USEnet post an article to net.space it shows up there. Then it goes to ARPA and it is posted on fa.space. Then if you subscribe to both, you will see the same article twice. You have to subcribe to both, because ARPA's fa.space is not distributed through net.space, so anything originating on ARPA can only be recieved by subcribing to fa.space. There is no way the person posting an article can control this. Double copies is just something we have to live with. Which brings me to my point. This system is currently a mess! It is easy to see how it got this way. ARPA net has been around a long time. USEnet is new and growing like topsy. In addition there is no central authority on USEnet. Dealing with this system is very frustrating. I have been trying for weeks to reply to a couple of letters I got from people at MIT-MC. ( Thanks by the way for the suggestions I got from you folks ) ( out there who tried to help with this problem, but none of ) ( the suggested paths worked!! ) As the system grows it looks like things will only get worse. But as my father used to say, "never complain unless you have a better idea". So I would like to suggest that the UNIX wizards out there try to get things put together in a more logical fashion. Perhaps a conference of system managers is in order. Since no one person is in charge, then it falls to the system managers to organize in some way. I would like to suggest that they start a dialog and try to arrange a way to implement a standard policy on networking. It might be a good idea to start an association of UNIX system managers, it could be called ASU, Association of Super Users. If something like this is not done soon, it looks like the system will degenerate into chaos. In the mean time, I would like to suggest that people sign their names with an address where they can be reached by US Snail, especially anyone on ARPAnet who might chance to see this. This news group is not sent to ARPA, I don't believe. END OF FLAME. Richard Piner Physics Dept. Purdue U. West Lafayette, IN 47907