[news.admin] "NNTP has had a number of very bad effects on the net..."

fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair) (07/04/88)

In the referenced article, webber@porthos.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) writes:
	NNTP has had a number of very bad effects on the net, but
	its security is the most minor of them.

Bob, I'd be most interested to read a complete explication of this
remark, posted to the net, or Emailed to me; your choice. What are
the effects that NNTP has had on the network, and which of them
are, in your opinion, bad (and why are they bad?)?

	curiousity may have killed the cat, but I'm not a cat,

	Erik E. Fair	ucbvax!fair	fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu

webber@aramis.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) (07/04/88)

In article <4244@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu>, fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair) writes:
> In the referenced article, webber@porthos.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) writes:
> 	NNTP has had a number of very bad effects on the net, but
> 	its security is the most minor of them.
> Bob, I'd be most interested to read a complete explication of this ...

   1) It has greatly decreased the response time of the net.  This has
      encouraged the use of news for idle chat rather than using mail
      for same.  [There are already enough people who prefer news to
      mail because it is more reliable without giving them instant
      turnaround as well.]  This also decreases the usefulness of cancel.
      
   2) It messes up the economics of the net.  Cross country communications
      costs are now no-charge for a number of sites.  Originally when
      nntp was installed, there was talk about using the nets wisely
      minimizing the number of times the same link would carry the
      same news, but instead what happens is that people just randomly feed
      off whatever site seems well connected.  The impact on the arpanet
      being one example of this -- although it is difficult to separate
      out all the factors leading up to the current arpanet disintegration.
      
   3) It has increased the centralization of the backbone.  Now that they
      don't have to talk over phone lines, they handle directly more of
      the ``local'' traffic.  For example, rutgers, gatech,  ncar, ames,
      bellcore, mcnc, mit-eddie, purdue, ucbvax, ucsd, uw-beaver,
      ukma, att, husc6, cmc12, hplabs, decwrl, decvax all interconnect
      over non-charge communication networks.  Meaning that most of the
      link restrictions on the US backbone map are software.

So, to sum up, I am not criticising nntp as software per se, but for
its social impact on the net.  Communications costs were once a major
feedback control on the flow of the net.  Removing them was not a 
clever idea.

----- BOB (webber@athos.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!athos.rutgers.edu!webber)

REASON: 
> Bob, I'd be most interested to read a complete explication of this
> remark, posted to the net, or Emailed to me; your choice. What are
> the effects that NNTP has had on the network, and which of them
> are, in your opinion, bad (and why are they bad?)?

  Since it was posted on the net and questioned on the net by more than
  one person within a day, I might as well reply on the net as well.
  Normal followup to news.misc manuveur applied with a cross posting
  to warn them that we were on the way.