emigh@ncsugn.ncsu.edu (Ted H. Emigh) (09/15/87)
This thought has been floating around in my head for some time. I had just about decided to forget mentioning it (after all, I get enough abuse from other sources to be asking for it from USENET) until today. The trigger was a note in the inet newsgroup sci.bio.biotechnology. It was from the BIONET people stating that they would like to set up mailing lists/USENET newsgroups concerning BIONET. In the note they mentioned that they were attempting to convince the net-gods to create the newsgroups. DISCLAIMER: I have no idea whether or not they have done so, or at what stage the negotiations are in. IT IS IRREVELEVANT TO THIS POSTING. For some time, I have noticed an increasing amount of animosity directed to those folks who support a large portion of the costs of keeping this network going. On the other hand, I have noticed some expressed bad feelings on the part of these sites to the unappreciative net in general. As I see it, the problem arises because of the disproportionate distribution of the costs of the news network. The backbone sites have taken control of the net in order to control their costs. But enough of the backgroud. I feel it is time to subdivide the net into several (many?) subnets. In the same way that inet, unix-pc-net, and alt-net exist, we should set up many nets to carry the news load. For example, a ibmpc-net, a sun-net, a bio-net, a unix-net, .... Each net would have their own backbones and control their own destiny. How would this help? 1) Although initially the backbones for many of the nets would remain the same, eventually the load could be moved to machines with special interest in the various topics. As an example, recently ethos (a unix-pc backbone) moved from Durham to Tennessee. Our department has 14 AT&T 7300s and are particularly interested in the unix-pc newsgroups. At the time of the move, we were unsure that our newsfeed (ncsuvx) would keep up with those newsgroups. We got together a proposal to our administration to continue the unix-pc feed from some other site (long-distance) in case ncsuvx decided to drop the feed. Even though our department has a very small phone budget, we got approval to continue the feed BECAUSE OF ITS IMPORTANCE TO US. It turned out that we didn't need to, but we were willing to continue a small part of the net at a cost to us because of its benefit to us. 2) Comments from backbone sites that "if you don't like it, then arrange your own news feeds" now would be possible. It makes it EASIER to get some news from one source and other news from another source. 3) Creation of new newsgroups might be easier. (In some ways, MORE organization is needed -- at least better dissemination of information is needed). Some newsgroups seem to generate lots of complaints, e.g., comp.xxxxxxxx.binaries. If it is important to our site (and other ibmpc-net sites) to have a ibmpc.binaries newsgroup, then we don't need to convince sites that have no interest in the ibmpc. I realize that this in not a simple thing to accomplish. I have been on the net since the hot topic of the summer was how the net would collapse when the students got back in the Fall and I have a certain respect for the resilience of the network. I also know that our site could not possibly pick up the phone bills for anything close to the amount of news that we receive, but we are able to pay for the most important (to us) news groups. I hope this generates some thoughtful comments. I am prepared to give more details of how this could be accomplished, although I am sure others could do equally as well. -- Ted H. Emigh, Dept. Genetics and Statistics, NCSU, Raleigh, NC uucp: mcnc!ncsuvx!ncsugn!emigh internet: emigh%ncsugn.ncsu.edu BITNET: NEMIGH@TUCC @ncsuvx.ncsu.edu:emigh@ncsugn.ncsu.edu