earle@smeagol.UUCP (03/04/87)
Recently, two people at JPL became recipients of Lauren Weinstein's `uulink' package for IBM PC's & clones, which provides UUCP capability for them. I've also seen John Gilmore mention a thingy called `uuslave', which I would imagine probably does the same thing or something similar (or a certain subset of UUCP). Now, these `uulink' copies are serial numbers #199 and #200, so it is safe to say that there's nothing to worry about yet, but I shudder to the thought of suddenly flooding the net with newsites that are all PC's running these programs or equivalent. Seems like we have enough sites as it is without suddenly being deluged with a million PC-DOS machines suddenly clamoring to be part of Usenet. From both an administrative and logistical viewpoint, it seems to me like this could present a problem of major magnitude if everyone and his mother jumps on the bandwagon and starts running these programs and announcing themselves to news.newsite. Note that I am not passing judgement on this chain of events, it is just something that I noted since I have now seen `uulink' in action on these people's machines, and extrapolating from there. I'd just be interested to see what other people think of this possible scenario. Am I being overly paranoid, or could this be a portend of things to come? -- Greg Earle UUCP: sdcrdcf!smeagol!earle; attmail!earle JPL ARPA: elroy!smeagol!earle@csvax.caltech.edu AT&T: +1 818 354 4034 earle@jplpub1.jpl.nasa.gov (For the daring) Is this an out-take from the ``BRADY BUNCH''?
dan@prairie.UUCP (03/05/87)
In article <919@smeagol.JPL.NASA.GOV> earle@smeagol.JPL.NASA.GOV (Greg Earle) writes: >Recently, two people at JPL became recipients of Lauren Weinstein's `uulink' >package for IBM PC's & clones, which provides UUCP capability for them. > ... >I shudder to the >thought of suddenly flooding the net with newsites that are all PC's running >these programs or equivalent. > ... >Am I being overly paranoid, or could this be a portend of things to come? Dunno. I don't think the net is going to be flooded with PC-DOSnoids, because most of them are still trying to figure out how to use `DIR', or learning how to be Lotus Power Users (eccch). The folks who have uulink probably got it because they were already exposed to Unix at work. That pretty much limits the market. On the other hand, you can buy a 286 machine for about $2000 with a pretty good hard disk, get Microport Unix for $400, and get on the air. That's what I did here at prairie (although the machine cost more than two grand at the time I got it). The net will eventually be flooded, not with DOS PC's, but with single- or couple-user Unix boxes. It's not clear to me why this is a serious problem from the news standpoint, because there are no routing tables to be maintained, and if everyone feeds a couple other sites the number of hops from end to end only increases logarithmically. On the other hand, since the folks trying to reduce the uucp routing headaches with the domain system don't believe that a "private person" site is for real, the impact of PCs on THAT project may end up being substantial. -- Dan Frank (w9nk) ARPA: dan@db.wisc.edu ATT: (608) 255-0002 (home) UUCP: ... uwvax!prairie!dan (608) 262-4196 (office) SNAILMAIL: 1802 Keyes Ave. Madison, WI 53711-2006
campbell@maynard.UUCP (03/05/87)
There's a lot more to Usenet than UUCP. I don't know about Lauren's
package, but uuslave is a VERY simpleminded UUCP file transfer hack.
To get news really running you'd need to port inews/rnews, expire,
readnews or rn or vn or vnews, etc. Remember also that since MS-DOS
is a primitive single-tasking OS, the machine would be completely tied
up while news was arriving or leaving. Given total USENET volume,
you'd have to devote almost all the waking hours of a PC to keep up
(my PC, running UNIX, is on the phone perhaps 10 hours a day, and we
only get about half the newsgroups).
Somehow I don't think the thought of PCs with UUCP is all that scary...
--
Larry Campbell The Boston Software Works, Inc.
Internet: campbell@maynard.uucp 120 Fulton Street, Boston MA 02109
uucp: {alliant,wjh12}!maynard!campbell +1 617 367 6846
ARPA: campbell%maynard.uucp@harvisr.harvard.edu MCI: LCAMPBELLmjranum@gouldsd.UUCP (03/05/87)
Another small point: running news on a PC with uulink is still a longish way away. Why ? Well, the news software actually pipes a whole bunch of commands through a series of pipes that would gag an IBM in no time at all. Mush-Dos implements pipes by making a tempfile on your disk and then execcing it's way along the pipe. Implementing a 4 step pipe (even on a hot motherboard like mine that is 3X IBM speed) takes quite a while. There's also the matter of diskspace, etc, etc, etc. I don't think the problem is going to be tons of PCs, I think the problem is going to be exponentially increasing traffic. The PCs will weed themselves out. After all, it would take one all night to process the amount of news we get here, not to mention phone costs, and disk space needs that would tend to make it (for now) prohibitively expensive for the home hobbyist. --mjr(); -- "It is better to shred the bugger than to bugger the shredder." -ancient doltic proverb.
ron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) (03/05/87)
In article <863@maynard.BSW.COM>, campbell@maynard.BSW.COM (Larry Campbell) writes: > There's a lot more to Usenet than UUCP. I don't know about Lauren's > package, but uuslave is a VERY simpleminded UUCP file transfer hack. Right, and so far, people are still working on getting news up on a IBM-PC running UNIX, the DOS port is probably farther away. -Ron
mdf@osu-eddie.UUCP (03/06/87)
In <919@smeagol.JPL.NASA.GOV> earle@smeagol.JPL.NASA.GOV (Greg Earle) writes: >Seems like we have enough sites as it is >without suddenly being deluged with a million PC-DOS machines suddenly >clamoring to be part of Usenet. From both an administrative and logistical >viewpoint, it seems to me like this could present a problem of major >magnitude if everyone and his mother jumps on the bandwagon and starts running >these programs and announcing themselves to news.newsite. There are many people who wish to access the net, whose employer is on the net but does not allow reading new and dealing with personal mail on company time. I can see that some of these people may find a solution in putting their home machine on the net. The only real hassle involved is for the site feeding them. I don't see how this is an issue that effects the net at large. I am lucky enough to have a guest account at a University to get around not having access to the net through my employer (we are working on it). Many people are not as lucky. While it is far more efficient to have one site feeding many users via accounts rather than uucp, it really is an issue for that one site, not the net.gods. Just my personal opinion... -- < < < < < < < < < < < < < < < < < < < <> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Mark D. Freeman mdf@osu-eddie.uucp InfoSolv Corporation mdf@Ohio-State.arpa 6099 Riverside Drive ...!cbosgd!osu-eddie!mdf Dublin, OH 43017 Guest account at The Ohio State University (614) 761-8444 < < < < < < < < < < < < < < < < < < < <> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >
edc@altnet.UUCP (Eric D. Christensen) (03/06/87)
In article <919@smeagol.JPL.NASA.GOV> earle@smeagol.JPL.NASA.GOV (Greg Earle) writes: >Recently, two people at JPL became recipients of Lauren Weinstein's `uulink' >package for IBM PC's & clones, which provides UUCP capability for them. I've >also seen John Gilmore mention a thingy called `uuslave', which I would >imagine probably does the same thing or something similar (or a certain subset >of UUCP). Now, these `uulink' copies are serial numbers #199 and #200, so it >is safe to say that there's nothing to worry about yet, but I shudder to the >thought of suddenly flooding the net with newsites that are all PC's running >these programs or equivalent. Seems like we have enough sites as it is >without suddenly being deluged with a million PC-DOS machines suddenly >clamoring to be part of Usenet. From both an administrative and logistical >viewpoint, it seems to me like this could present a problem of major >magnitude if everyone and his mother jumps on the bandwagon and starts running >these programs and announcing themselves to news.newsite. Scary thought is right! Not that I'm anti PC or anything, but the number of PCs in the world is huge. I'd be willing to be that a good percentage run modems, and a good percentage of those would like to get on the USENET. Now I don't have any problem with that except for one thing. What's going to happen to the limited bandwidth available to the uucp links if we suddenly doubled or tripled the number of hosts. Also, is it right for a system to tie up someones modem for 2 or 3 hours a day when only one or two users have access? I would tend to say not. Multiuser installations are able to serve many users and provide additional services (i.e. forwarding articles, gateways, mail routing, source archives, etc.) that a PC host just won't be capable of. I think that these issues need to be discussed. I would hate to see PCs banned from the net. Equal access is one of the fundamental principals of the net, but I'm afraid that a VAX is a bit more equal then a PC-XT in this case. (For that matter, what about the ATs running Xenix with ony one or two users?) I would hate to see the net collapse under it's own weight, but I'm afraid that is the direction we are headed in. Let's see if we can kick around some ideas to help solve this problem (hopefully without cutting anyone off). Cheers- -- Eric D. Christensen UUCP: ihnp4!sun!altos86!altnet!edc Altos Computer Systems Inter: edc@altnet.UUCP Customer Support Division AT&T: (408)433-3614 or (408)434-6688 399 West Trimble Rd., San Jose, CA 95131
grr@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (George Robbins) (03/06/87)
In article <477@gouldsd.UUCP> mjranum@gouldsd.UUCP (Marcus J Ranum) writes: > > Another small point: running news on a PC with uulink is >still a longish way away. Why ? Well, the news software actually >pipes a whole bunch of commands through a series of pipes that >would gag an IBM in no time at all.... I'm not sure, but I seem to remember that Lauren's product is sort of an integrated uucp/mail system. In case anybody hasn't noticed lately, it is quite possible to recieve/post news via normal uucp mail, assuming the existance of a cooperative netnews site within path addressability. I'm not too worried about PC's flooding the network. Like death, it's bound to happen sooner or later. Even if MS-DOS and other native mode operating systems can't handle it, you can expect Apple, Atari and Commodore to be selling some kind of unix compatible systems within the next year or two. Hopefully, as the problem evolves, so will the solutions. Stargate is one possible solution, some rev x version of fido-net may take care of the PC crowd. There are, of course, the commericial networks, just chock full of people doing pretty much what we do on usenet. -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {ihnp4|seismo|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing arpa: cbmvax!grr@seismo.css.GOV Commodore, Engineering Department fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)
blob@bnrmtv.UUCP (Brian Bechtel) (03/07/87)
> In article <863@maynard.BSW.COM>, campbell@maynard.BSW.COM (Larry Campbell) writes: > > There's a lot more to Usenet than UUCP. I don't know about Lauren's > > package, but uuslave is a VERY simpleminded UUCP file transfer hack. > > Right, and so far, people are still working on getting news up on > a IBM-PC running UNIX, the DOS port is probably farther away. > There are many sites on the net already running Unix, news, etc. on IBM ATs or clones. Lauren's package provides wonderful access to mail, but only so-so access to news. For instance, all news groups that you subscribe to go into one pseudo-user called news. The mail side of his package supports everything you'd want, and allows multiple users on the single PC to have their own mail accounts. We use it at Mead Data Central's personal computer group to communicate with our friends on the net. Right now, we ARE receiving about 7 newsgroups, and it's a pain--I ignore the groups that two other people want to read, etc. I'd like to do something better, for news. But for mail, his package is pretty slick (ignoring the fact that there is no documentation supplied, etc....) UULINK works. --Brian Bechtel {amdahl, hplabs}!bnrmtv!mdc!blob
javoskamp@watnot.UUCP (03/07/87)
In article <1112@altnet.UUCP> edc@altnet.UUCP (Eric D. Christensen) writes: |In article <919@smeagol.JPL.NASA.GOV> earle@smeagol.JPL.NASA.GOV (Greg Earle) writes: |>Recently, two people at JPL became recipients of Lauren Weinstein's `uulink' ... |>clamoring to be part of Usenet. From both an administrative and logistical |>viewpoint, it seems to me like this could present a problem of major |>magnitude if everyone and his mother jumps on the bandwagon and starts running |>these programs and announcing themselves to news.newsite. | |Scary thought is right! What would probably be useful would be to have a local version of news.newsite (say within a subdomain, once they get going properly). While they would be posted within the local area, other areas would only find out about them if they wanted to (say by sending in a request for new local sites). As long as you can send mail to george@my_pc1.foobar.com reasonably, who cares if we know how to get there directly. |Not that I'm anti PC or anything, but the number of PCs in the world is huge. |I'd be willing to be that a good percentage run modems, and a good percentage |of those would like to get on the USENET. Darned right there are. | |Now I don't have any problem with that except for one thing. What's going to |happen to the limited bandwidth available to the uucp links if we suddenly |doubled or tripled the number of hosts. Also, is it right for a system to tie |up someones modem for 2 or 3 hours a day when only one or two users have |access? I would tend to say not. Multiuser installations are able to serve |many users and provide additional services (i.e. forwarding articles, gateways, |mail routing, source archives, etc.) that a PC host just won't be capable of. Don't forget that not all the PCs will have to call up, and not all the news will have to be downloaded. I'm sure with a little work the local users could decide who would read what from the host and redistribute internally later. We'd just end up with a zillion more (nearly-)leaf nodes on the net. The actual load on any given existing host need not increase by all that much. | |I think that these issues need to be discussed. I would hate to see PCs banned |from the net. Equal access is one of the fundamental principals of the net, but |I'm afraid that a VAX is a bit more equal then a PC-XT in this case. (For that |matter, what about the ATs running Xenix with ony one or two users?) | |I would hate to see the net collapse under it's own weight, but I'm afraid that |is the direction we are headed in. Let's see if we can kick around some ideas |to help solve this problem (hopefully without cutting anyone off). Yes, let's. Why should I have to spend "n" hours a day at the office (university, etc.) reading news when I could do it at home during my "free time" at night. :-) Seriously, access to the net is fairly important to me and I'm sure it is to others as well. The question is how can we keep it flexible enough to survive and still quick enough to be useful. -- The opinions expressed herein are accurate. The same cannot be said for spelling and grammar. UUCP : {allegra,decvax,utzoo,clyde}!watmath!watnot!javoskamp CSNET : javoskamp%watnot@waterloo.CSNET
bill@sigma.UUCP (03/09/87)
Organization: In article <1112@altnet.UUCP> edc@altnet.UUCP (Eric D. Christensen) writes: >[...] I think that these issues need to be discussed. I would hate to see >PCs banned from the net. Equal access is one of the fundamental principals >of the net, but I'm afraid that a VAX is a bit more equal then a PC-XT in >this case. [...] How would we kick PCs off the net? There's nothing to identify a particular system's type - other than what the owner allows to be known. It's not a problem of software: I have already had my (dare I say it?) CP/M machine converse with our Vax via a UUCP-clone*, and have sketched out a relatively crude but useable news system. I'm not sure what the "equality" relationship mentioned really is.. Bill Swan (* Don't ask for it.. it's far from ready for release. Besides, I'm working on "uuslave" now; well, as soon as I fix my C compiler, I mean :-) -- William Swan {ihnp4,decvax,allegra,...}!uw-beaver!tikal!sigma!bill The NRO cryptography terrorist uses CIA drugs and likes to decode secret NSA and DES cipher codes.
mojo@micropro.UUCP (03/09/87)
As a UULINK site within MicroPro (.mp-mojo.micropro.UUCP) it now
appears to me that a single user site (which UULINK really is,
especially for news) will probably be no more burden upon the net
than adding a user to a large site.
Especially with the advent of domains -- I don't have to appear in
the maps. (Thank you for that uucp project!)
Now which, do you suppose, is the appropriate newsgroup to offer
public domain utilities for UULINK? I have a netnews sorter that
I'm willing to contribute.
--
Mojo
... Morris Jones, MicroPro Int'l Corp., Product Development
{lll-crg,ptsfa,dual,well,pyramid}!micropro!mojo
Not the opinion of MicroPro!gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) (03/09/87)
My experience with the micro people interested in uuslave is similar to
Lauren's with UULINK. Mostly people want it for email or for automated
file transfer. A few people want to build gateways with it, e.g. a
Fidonet<->Unix gateway package that would interconnect the IBM PC-based
Fido mail network with the UUCP mail network, similar to the way the
Arpanet is now linked with UUCP mail. Personally I'll be glad to have
another few thousand people whose communication with me can be
computer-mediated rather than conducted at the mercy of letters and
telephones.
Administratively there is not much problem -- uuslave sites will look
like Unix uucp sites. Since many will be hung off existing major sites
(e.g. at universities), many will naturally fall under an existing
domain, with no overhead to network routing or table size.
It's a pain to wedge the uucp and netnews software onto the brain
damaged micro operating systems of today. Remember -- 11 char file
names with the only dot after the 8th char! No multitasking. No
delayed execution. Can't listen on the phone while the user is
typing. Directories a recent extension. Etc. The Amiga is the only
semi-cheap non-Unix machine that could run a serious Unix-like uucp,
mail, and news system. It's possible to wedge it onto anything, but
the authors of micro software that uuslave must coordinate with for
modem access (e.g. when someone calls in, what program is listening?)
are so far uninterested in making it easy to run anything but their own
software anyway. Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
Also remember that netnews takes a signifigant amount of disk space and
administrative time. Most users won't pay that price; The people who
run a full netnews feed on a micro will have to be at least as sharp as
the folks who administer news on a Unix machine.
--
John Gilmore {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu gnu@ingres.berkeley.edu
Love your country but never trust its government.
-- from a hand-painted road sign in central Pennsylvaniavnend@ukecc.uky.edu (D. V. W. James) (03/09/87)
In article <477@gouldsd.UUCP> mjranum@gouldsd.UUCP (Marcus J Ranum) writes: > Another small point: running news on a PC with uulink is >still a longish way away. Why ? Well, the news software actually >pipes a whole bunch of commands through a series of pipes that >would gag an IBM in no time at all. Mush-Dos implements pipes by >making a tempfile on your disk and then execcing it's way along >the pipe. Implementing a 4 step pipe (even on a hot motherboard >like mine that is 3X IBM speed) takes quite a while. There's also >the matter of diskspace, etc, etc, etc. But AT's and AT clones can run UNIX, some with high clock speeds and coprocessors. And I've seen harddisks as large as 80Meg for as little as $1200. And there are several PCs on fidonet running more than enough disk space to carry news. > I don't think the problem is going to be tons of PCs, I >think the problem is going to be exponentially increasing traffic. >The PCs will weed themselves out. After all, it would take one all >night to process the amount of news we get here, not to mention >phone costs, and disk space needs that would tend to make it (for >now) prohibitively expensive for the home hobbyist. >--mjr(); Phone costs, locally, are nil for the hobbyist willing to settle for only one feed. UKMA has said (at least I think they said...) that they would feed local sites. Currently they feed 2, with one more coming up soon and talk of adding two more, some as local calls, some as part of the campus network. Time could be a problem, but if you are willing to pay the cost for a dedicated news PC, then the cost of a 2400 baud modem and a dedicated phone line is cheap. And to top things off, Apple just announced the Macintosh II, running a 68020, 2meg RAM and an 80meg harddisk. It should do the job of running Netnews just fine... Personally, I don't think that this is really the problem that the original poster thinks that it will be. *I* would like to have my own site at home, but how many of us do? Laura Crieghton at hoptoad already does, I'm sure that a few other sites are basically the same thing. Rather than the sudden influx that might swamp the system, I think we will just slowly continue to grow, with a growing proportion of the new sites being pc's. They shouldn't generate lots of traffic individually, though in mass they might start to cause problems. But this would just be a problem that would occur sooner or later anyway. The only alternative is limiting USENET's size to some arbitrary number, and is anyone REALLY in favor of that? -- Later y'all, Vnend Ignorance is the Mother of Adventure. cbosgd!ukma!ukecc!vnend; or vnend@engr.uky.edu; or vnend%ukecc.uucp@ukma.BITNET Also: cn0001dj@ukcc.BITNET and Compuserve 73277,1513 "Then the fit hit the Shan."
cds@atelabs.UUCP (03/10/87)
In article <678@brl-sem.ARPA> ron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) writes: >Right, and so far, people are still working on getting news up on >a IBM-PC running UNIX, the DOS port is probably farther away. Actually, it's fairly easy to put news (and rn) up on an IBM-PC running Unix. I'm posting this followup from just such a system. Since there are a LOT more VAX class machines running Unix than IBM-PC's (running Unix), I don't think you have to worry about the PC's flooding the net. By the way, Lauren's Uulink package allows an MS-DOS machine to be a news node. -- Dave Shanks ..!tektronix!tessi!atelabs!cds AT&E Laboratories cds@atelabs.UUCP 1400 NW Compton Suite 300 (503) 690-2000 Beaverton, OR 97006
sl@van-bc.UUCP (03/10/87)
In article <678@brl-sem.ARPA> ron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) writes: >In article <863@maynard.BSW.COM>, campbell@maynard.BSW.COM (Larry Campbell) writes: >> There's a lot more to Usenet than UUCP. I don't know about Lauren's >> package, but uuslave is a VERY simpleminded UUCP file transfer hack. > >Right, and so far, people are still working on getting news up on >a IBM-PC running UNIX, the DOS port is probably farther away. > But having news 2.11 is not all that necessary. Right now I'm batching up stuff for local computer clubs with the regular batch mechanism. They take it down to their pc's with xmodem, or kermit and just read the stuff in semi-random order. They are very interested and spend an inordinate amount of time just to get that. The thing to remember is that even small Unix sites don't always get a full feed. A small pc site is likely to take only a small number of groups. For example I'm sending all amiga groups to the local librarian of the Amiga club, the president of the Atari club gets all of the Atari groups. So it is quite reasonable to think in terms of running a SMALL news system on a personal computer. Even one that just has two floppies and a RAM disk. The point is that where there is a will there is a way. These people are extremely interested in getting online. I don't think we'll see an explosion of site names however. Most of the small sites will hide under third or fourth level domain names. For example johndoe@atariclub.bc.can As long as atariclub has one friendly Unix system to forward mail for them and pass news along they will just look like one (moderately large) site. Currently no special software is being used. But plans are afoot for compress, then uuslave. With a mailer to follow. You should be hearing from them by summer :-) Anyway I'm finding it a fascinating experiment. -- Stuart Lynne ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision!van-bc!sl Vancouver,BC,604-937-7532
sl@van-bc.UUCP (03/13/87)
In article <206@atelabs.UUCP> cds@atelabs.UUCP (David Shanks) writes: >In article <678@brl-sem.ARPA> ron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) writes: >>Right, and so far, people are still working on getting news up on >>a IBM-PC running UNIX, the DOS port is probably farther away. > >Actually, it's fairly easy to put news (and rn) up on an IBM-PC running >Unix. I'm posting this followup from just such a system. > Sure is. I feed just such a site. His only problem is his 40MB of disk keeps overflowing from the full feed. And I have to use -b12 with compress or his uncompress time goes WAY up :-). The interesting part is, he fan's some stuff out past him to other smaller pc type sites :-). FYI he is running IBM Xenix, IBM AT (6Mhz), 2MB RAM, 40MB disk. Standard 2.11 news, 4.3 rn. -- Stuart Lynne ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision!van-bc!sl Vancouver,BC,604-937-7532
joe@auspyr.UUCP (Joe Angelo) (03/16/87)
in article <361@van-bc.UUCP>, sl@van-bc.UUCP (Stuart Lynne) says: > Xref: auspyr comp.mail.uucp:349 news.admin:249 > > In article <206@atelabs.UUCP> cds@atelabs.UUCP (David Shanks) writes: >>In article <678@brl-sem.ARPA> ron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) writes: >>>Right, and so far, people are still working on getting news up on >>>a IBM-PC running UNIX, the DOS port is probably farther away. Why not just use a PC for what it is good at? ... a fancy terminal. -- "No matter Joe Angelo, Sr. Sys. Engineer @ Austec, Inc., San Jose, CA. where you go, ARPA: aussjo!joe@lll-tis-b.arpa PHONE: [408] 279-5533 there you UUCP: {sdencore,necntc,cbosgd,amdahl,ptsfa,dana}!aussjo!joe are ..." UUCP: {styx,imagen,dlb,gould,sci,altnet}!auspyr!joe
michael@stb.UUCP (Michael) (03/16/87)
In article <1112@altnet.UUCP> edc@altnet.UUCP (Eric D. Christensen) writes: > >Now I don't have any problem with that except for one thing. What's going to >happen to the limited bandwidth available to the uucp links if we suddenly >doubled or tripled the number of hosts. Also, is it right for a system to tie >up someones modem for 2 or 3 hours a day when only one or two users have >access? I would tend to say not. Multiuser installations are able to serve >many users and provide additional services (i.e. forwarding articles, gateways, >mail routing, source archives, etc.) that a PC host just won't be capable of. > >I think that these issues need to be discussed. I would hate to see PCs banned >from the net. Equal access is one of the fundamental principals of the net, but >I'm afraid that a VAX is a bit more equal then a PC-XT in this case. (For that >matter, what about the ATs running Xenix with ony one or two users?) Well, let me put in my 2 sents. I'm running a Trs-80 model 16A. When I joined the net, I had a whopping 12 meg hard disk, 2 of which was free. Since then I've gotten a 70 meg and a news feed. Right now, I have about 4 regular unix users (one of who has his own system; he gives me a partial feed and calls my system to read some groups. If/when he gets 2.11 running on his AT clone, we'll go to batched ihaves transfers. Until then his 3 or 4 users get a partial feed elsewhere. Modem tie up? Well, uucp is logged on my system only a little. I have 3 basic modem uses: uucp (about 4-8 hours a day, I haven't paid much attention), unix users (about 4 hours), and bbs users (my "site" originally was a model 1 (no, not on the net, but I called it stb then) running a public access bbs. It still runs a version of that same bbs. (213-459-7231, 3/12/24)). No idea how much the bbs users are on the system, but there's about 8-12 regular users, plus occasional drop-ins. All this on one phone line. And 512K memory. I had an incredibly hard time getting a feed. My current main news feed is scgvaxd, and it has become impossible lately to get mail to go out to them. (Ditto for outgoing news--10 to 1 this gets to you via remsit!ucla-an) However, I was contacted recently by a gould, with 12 meg memory, 1.2gig disks (more memory than I had disk originally) asking for a connection. They'll be on by the time you read this (I know my propagation delay). Interestingly enough, they've aparently been having such a hard time getting on that they offered to provide services such as mail routing. The point? This is one small system that is providing a connection to a larger, mail-routing, archiving, etc. system. You can bet I'll feed them the sources groups; its easier than trying to contact $alz. Limited bandwith? On the edges, there will soon be enough sites to choose from that that won't be a problem. If worse comes to worse, the small site and the large site can simply swap feeds (only need to swap one). The big problem, if any, will be either in mail along the edge, or mail across the center. Doubling the number of sites will not double the number of users; maybe a 10% increase. It will make a large number of new "Edge nodes" to get future connections to, a small amount of X-center mail, but probably a lot of mail along the edge as you (try to) talk to local people you know. That will be a problem for the small sites more than for the big sites they talk to. -- : Michael Gersten ihnp4!hermix!ucla-an!remsit!stb!michael : sdcrdcf!trwrb!ucla-an!remsit!stb!michael : Sealed with a curse \ As sharp as a knife : Doomed is your sole \ And dammed is your wife.
todd@uhccux.UUCP (03/21/87)
>In article <477@gouldsd.UUCP> mjranum@gouldsd.UUCP (Marcus J Ranum) writes: >I'm not sure, but I seem to remember that Lauren's product is sort of an >integrated uucp/mail system. In case anybody hasn't noticed lately, it is I just ordered UULINK from Lauren (Vortex Technology). The product info I got from him says: "Special handling and reply generation for incoming Usenet netnews messages including built-in netnews message decryption (when desired). Netnews is handled as a special class of mail (via a "netnews mailbox")." -- Todd Ogasawara, U. of Hawaii Computing Center UUCP: {ihnp4,seismo,ucbvax,dcdwest}!sdcsvax!nosc!uhccux!todd ARPA: uhccux!todd@nosc.ARPA INTERNET: todd@uhccux.UHCC.HAWAII.EDU