wisner@killer.UUCP (Bill Wisner) (06/12/88)
>USENET has been mortally wounded with the passing of ihnp4. From where >I am sitting the prognosis is not good. I doubt it. ihnp4 has been flaky and unreliable with mail for some time now. This is no secret. Its loss will be felt, but hardly fatal. If the truth be known, it stopped being a truly major news node some time ago. Today rutgers is on top.. -- Bill Wisner ..!{ames,att,decwrl,ihnp4,mit-eddie,osu-cis}!killer!wisner
egranthm@jackson.UUCP (Ewan Grantham) (06/12/88)
In article <4434@killer.UUCP>, wisner@killer.UUCP (Bill Wisner) writes: > >USENET has been mortally wounded with the passing of ihnp4. From where > >I am sitting the prognosis is not good. > > I doubt it. ihnp4 has been flaky and unreliable with mail for some time > now. This is no secret. Its loss will be felt, but hardly fatal. If the My question now is, what will happen to mail and news which were supposed to be routed through ihnp4? Are we about to see a mass of material bouncing back through the net? As for its flakiness or non-flakiness, I don't really think that's the point. Like all human organizations, as they get larger, they are going to change, in both good and bad ways. The increasing availability of Unix machines means that volume on the net is going to keep increasing, and I can only hope that there will be enough people willing to keep providing the disk space and incurring the phone charges, to keep the net up. Of course, as erasable CDs and 19.2k modems become more popular, this may not be such a problem :-) Ewan Grantham -- Ewan Grantham (601) 354-6454 ext.358 {pyramid or bellcore or tness..}!swbatl!jackson!egranthm I'm not responsible for my bosses, and vice-versa
emv@mailrus.cc.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) (06/13/88)
>>USENET has been mortally wounded with the passing of ihnp4. From where >>I am sitting the prognosis is not good. >Today rutgers is on top.. A quick peek at the pathalias database on citi.umich.edu shows paths through ihnp4 for exactly four sites: ihnp4 rutgers!moss!ihnp4!%s ilunix rutgers!moss!ihnp4!ilunix!%s oberlin rutgers!moss!ihnp4!oberlin!%s ohare rutgers!moss!ihnp4!ohare!%s --Ed Edward Vielmetti, u of michigan.
haugj@pigs.UUCP (The Beach Bum) (06/13/88)
In article <4434@killer.UUCP>, wisner@killer.UUCP (Bill Wisner) writes: > Today rutgers is on top.. > -- > Bill Wisner Stop it. Why don't those machines just stop it? When did rutgers get tired of being on the bottom? ;-) - John. -- The Beach Bum Big "D" Home for Wayward Hackers UUCP: ...!killer!rpp386!jfh jfh@rpp386.uucp :SMAILERS "You are in a twisty little maze of UUCP connections, all alike" -- fortune
dg@lakart.UUCP (David Goodenough) (06/14/88)
From article <531@mailrus.cc.umich.edu>, by emv@mailrus.cc.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti): >USENET has been mortally wounded with the passing of ihnp4. From where >I am sitting the prognosis is not good. It will make a dent. Remember, ihnp4 pretty well has it's own file in the map data area (Can't remember the name, but it's a biggie). However the following typescript says everything that needs to be said regarding the damage we have brought upon ourselves. Script started on Mon Jun 13 13:12:28 1988 lakart!dg(mail/waiting)[61]-> grep -c ihnp4 /usr/lib/uucp/uumap/UUPATH 2258 lakart!dg(mail/waiting)[62]-> grep -c -v ihnp4 /usr/lib/uucp/uumap/UUPATH 8552 lakart!dg(mail/waiting)[63]-> wc -l /usr/lib/uucp/uumap/UUPATH 10810 /usr/lib/uucp/uumap/UUPATH lakart!dg(mail/waiting)[64]-> ^D script done on Mon Jun 13 13:13:39 1988 As has been suggested we must reduce bandwidth. Is there no way of unilaterally ditching any article in an unmoderated group whose size exceedes a given limit. Or creating "net wide Kill files" - this would clean up the "HELP ME!!" problem in a real hurry. -- dg@lakart.UUCP - David Goodenough +---+ | +-+-+ ....... !harvard!cca!lakart!dg +-+-+ | +---+
jfh@rpp386.UUCP (John F. Haugh II) (06/14/88)
In article <531@mailrus.cc.umich.edu> emv@mailrus.cc.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) writes: >A quick peek at the pathalias database on citi.umich.edu shows >paths through ihnp4 for exactly four sites: i did a quick peek just now to confirm what i mostly already knew anyhow. of 12,000+ sites, 1,604 are reached by way of ihnp4 from here. most of which start with tness7!ihnp4 so obviously ihnp4 is a big site for tness7. - john.
jerry@oliveb.olivetti.com (Jerry Aguirre) (06/16/88)
In article <2714@rpp386.UUCP> jfh@rpp386.UUCP (The Beach Bum) writes: >i did a quick peek just now to confirm what i mostly already knew anyhow. >of 12,000+ sites, 1,604 are reached by way of ihnp4 from here. most of >which start with tness7!ihnp4 so obviously ihnp4 is a big site for tness7. Obviously tness7 is a big site for yours. I just did a quick peek at d.usa.oh.1 for the map entry for ihnp4. It lists a total of 7 sites it connects to! (Note that this is not the sites that connect TO ihnp4, just those that ihnp4 publishes it will forward to.) Of the 7, 5 are DAILY and 2 are DAILY/4. I submit that if more than 10% of your paths go thru DAILY or DAILY/4 connections then you or tness7 should seriously consider adding some links.
simmons@applga.uucp (Steve Simmons) (06/16/88)
Lordy, lordy. Isn't the the outlying area of alt.flame? In southeastern Michigan we are taking some steps that a lot of other folks ought to emulate. We are rationalizing news and mail. The sysops of the major local system got together, drew a map, and have created a southeastern Michigan backbone. It covers roughly the southeast quarter of the lower penninsula, and will do wonders for local distribution when we're done. Six sites are backbones, all carrying full feeds, all triply connected. We have four "outside world" connections for news, more for mail. This connection will end the stupidity of mail from Ann Arbor to Detroit going thru Rutgers and ihnp4, will reduce almost all sites long distance costs, improve mail and news delivery, *and reduce the load that southeastern michigan puts on the rest of usenet*. So all you folks please stop bitching. Get out your maps, form local backbones, and in general clean up your act. We can do much better than has been done so far. -- +- Steve Simmons UNIX Systems Mgr. Schlumberger CAD/CAM -+ + simmons@applga.uucp ...umix!applga!simmons + +- "Opinions expressed are all my own, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc." -+
jtn@potomac.ads.com (John T. Nelson) (06/28/88)
> From: simmons@applga.uucp (Steve Simmons) > Subject: Re: USENET is dead! Long live USENET! > In southeastern Michigan we are taking some steps that a lot of other > folks ought to emulate. We are rationalizing news and mail. > The sysops of the major local system got together, drew a map, and > have created a southeastern Michigan backbone. It covers roughly the > southeast quarter of the lower penninsula, and will do wonders for > local distribution when we're done. Six sites are backbones, all > carrying full feeds, all triply connected. We have four "outside world" > connections for news, more for mail. This connection will end the > stupidity of mail from Ann Arbor to Detroit going thru Rutgers and > ihnp4, will reduce almost all sites long distance costs, improve mail > and news delivery, *and reduce the load that southeastern michigan > puts on the rest of usenet*. Well well... at LAST someone has come up with a rational approach! Instead of prognosticating the death of Usenet, you self-proclaimed software wizards should be cleaning up the networking code so that it accomoodates the loss of such a site. And you site administrators should fix YOUR MAILERS so that they GENERATE LEGAL MAIL ADDRESSES. Perhaps we should move away from dependencies on backbones and design network software with distributed intelligence and routing information that would tolerate dynamic shifts in the networks topology. I've talked to a number of people with some great ideas on how the network software should be improved. Alas... who has the time. From: mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack) Subject: Re: The death of USENET >>The need is to bring USENET volume back down to tolerable levels -- which >>I'm somewhat arbitrarily building a cutoff level of a megabyte of news a >>day. About 1/3 of current levels. >> >>This is going to be painful. For me, personally, it's especially painful >>because if you look closely, I've targetted just about every USENET group >>that means anything to me. But these are not times to be selfish. These are >>times of survival. Which I hope sinks in around the net. But I doubt it. >This strikes me as a panic reaction. Why don't we wait and see what impact >the disappearance of ihnp4 actually has? Chuq makes a good point by claiming that these are times for survival and not selfishness. Sometimes you have to amputate to save a life. However, I think that removing soc.all, talk.all, etc.all is a much too reactionary measure. Rather, site administrators should begin to take more local responsibility and the network software should be improved to accomodate the network's growing needs. Much of the noise in the rec, binary and talk groups can be eliminated by expiring these groups quickly or rejecting them from your site entirely in your sys files. My site does this because I don't tolerate flame-fests. And since there are too many viruses rampant in the world, we don't keep a lot of the binary groups around either. Given this... one can restrict entire groups as Chuq suggests without hacking the net code and explicitly tearing out the rec and soc groups. The prediliction towards deleting the comp, soc and rec groups comes from the fact that most of us sponge off of our employers or Universities for access and what employer wants to pay for these noisy groups? With only technical groups though, Usenet would no longer appeal to as wide a range of users. It would no longer be a Use-net. >Chuq's approach to the survival of the net represents an attitude which >I think is far too prevalent. "The net is strained: we have to reduce >the amount of inessential information." Why not try to *improve* the >system instead of accepting its deficiencies? C news is a step in this >direction: let's get a beta version of it out. (Henry? Geoff? Help!) I agree. Instead of tearing down the net to accomodate the software, we should start thinking about the design of that software and why it can't accomodate the complexity of the network. Remember that there are both social and technical complexities involved. >Maybe it's time for people who care about the net, the *whole* net >and not just the technical groups, to get together and try to solve >some of these problems. I'm afraid people would rather flame about JJ. From: russ@wpg.UUCP (Russell Lawrence) Subject: Re: The death of USENET -- Appropriate Medicine > Some of these arguments may well be valid, but nevertheless, we'll need > to remind ourselves of Chuq's warning that the usenet can't be all > things to all people. Usenet is not the Universe. It is, however, a > wonderful place to exchange ideas about unix. Only Unix? I don't think so. > Perhaps the sites where net connections are in jeopardy could be > persuaded to drop non-comp groups as an alternative to dropping out > altogether. Right. Don't force all of us to adopt the all or nothing alternative. -- John T. Nelson UUCP: sun!sundc!potomac!jtn Advanced Decision Systems Internet: jtn@potomac.ads.com 1500 Wilson Blvd #512; Arlington, VA 22209-2401 (703) 243-1611 "Hi... My name is Hobbes. I'm the product of a malicious 5-year old's twisted and destructive imagination. Would YOU like to be my friend?"