gil@limbic.UUCP (Gil Kloepfer Jr.) (09/01/88)
I would like to know if anyone on the net (including the author if the article to which this posting is in reference) has read the article "No Shortage of Topics on the Usenet" (in the ''UNIX VIEWS'' section of _digital_review_, August 29, 1988, p73) by James W. Livingston. This article is the second of two that I have read (perhaps the first one was authored by the same person) having seemingly negative connotations regarding the net in itself. Before following-up this article, please read the article in _digital_review_. Now for my input... This is the second of two articles that I have read that see the end of Usenet and netnews introduced by the decision AT&T made to not pass 3rd party mail through its machine [ie. you can't use an AT&T machine as a stepping stone to another outside machine, but you can use it to mail to a machine within AT&T itself, or to receive the distribution of netnews in certain cases -- YES -- this is the correct interpretation of AT&T's new policy]. In any event, I do NOT feel that this has at all marked the beginning of the end of Usenet. Although the AT&T systems did form a relatively major backbone to Usenet itself, they are not what makes-up the Usenet. Usenet is a cooperation between people and organizations in who's best interests it is to keep this network working. In some form or another, we all derive pleasure and professional advancement by participating in Usenet. At this time, I see no reason for all of the net to go out and buy time on a machine simply to get usenet access. As Telebit (and other higher-speed modems) become more affordable, news access will become less burdensome to smaller sites, who will be able to participate more in the sharing of news. In short, everyone will feel the pinch of AT&T's decision, but this doesn't mean the end of the net by far. Second -- Is Usenet changing? Yes. It will ALWAYS be in transition as technology changes. I don't think we have to worry about running out to "[...] experience the net while it is still available [...]" because it will always be available. What did we lose that AT&T made convenient? A large, seemingly unlimited "backbone." That is solved through using alternative routes through (perhaps? smaller) sites. A message that took two hours may take one day now. Perhaps we are now more dependent on the university sites which may be up and down from day to day (but usually up). The other important convenience AT&T provided (and perhaps the one with the biggest impact) is the loss of up-to-date maps and their routing system. This problem is becoming less of a problem with more installations installing the "smail" mailer and keeping an online pathalias file up-to-date. In the future, there will likely be other ways of routing messages. Things DO change, but I doubt that change will mean the dissolving of Usenet. My purpose in writing this article is to rebut, in a sense of the word, the sarcasm and lack of meaning that people like Mr. Livingston give to Usenet and netnews in general. He could have, instead of discussing the net in a video-game-like light, discussed the net as a *wealth* of _useful_ information, and a group of talented people sharing their expertise with others...discussing a wide variety of topics in a nationwide/worldwide forum...showing how the net really symbolizes a peaceful worldwide exchange of information [even though it may, in some cases, seem "...without end (or point)."]. Usenet will only die if we, the net itself, decide to stop supporting it (are we really doing this in general??), or if some kind of government regulation makes it too expensive (unlikely at this point). I don't believe that published scare-tactics are going to maintain the popularity and integrity of the net (just like the media made *all* local bulletin board users seem like teenagers passing illegal information and breaking into systems). Other comments on this topic are welcome. I apologize in advance if my interpretation of the article mentioned above was incorrect. I also apologize if this topic was beaten to death with the last outrush of articles following AT&T's policy change. I simply wish to stimulate some insight as to how the net is being viewed by folks on the outside (maybe your boss???) through the various forms of media. I do feel the crunch of AT&T's decision, but they had to do what they had to do. It is now up to us to adjust. +------------------------------------+----------------------------------------+ | Gil Kloepfer, Jr. | Net-Address: | | ICUS Software Systems | {boulder,talcott}!icus!limbic!gil | | P.O. Box 1 | Internet: gil@icus.islp.ny.us | | Islip Terrace, New York 11752 | Othernet: gil@limbic.UUCP | +------------------------------------+----------------------------------------+
fair@Apple.COM (Erik E. Fair) (09/02/88)
Answer: No. USENET is so richly connected that it would take an act of Congress or a nuclear war to shut it down. I stopped worrying about the death of the network in 1983 when USENET went over 500 sites. News will continue to flow. Mail (i.e. the UUCP network) is another matter - the removal from service of "ihnp4" will cause lots of disruptions to any site that isn't using the UUCP Map database and a route generating mailer to route their mail (i.e. they still route things by hand). Many such sits depended upon ihnp4 to do routing for them, and encoded it in their signature files and in mailing lists that they are on. Those sites are SOL until either they install a route generating mailer (and then they won't have to worry about routes) or they take a minute to look at the maps and figure out new paths to statically use to their correspondents. If you think this is a plug for the maps, you're right. How many of you know all the routes to all the sites in the network? The UUCP maps had almost all of the references to "ihnp4" and "cbosgd" removed from the maps a month ago, in advance of their demise. Those sites who use this data to route their mail are already taken care of... Have you sent in a UUCP map update to your regional coordinator recently? Northern California UUCP Map Coordinator, Erik E. Fair apple!fair fair@apple.com
dyer@spdcc.COM (Steve Dyer) (09/02/88)
Eric is right. The drek shovelled by these so-called "journalists" from
the computer trade rags is simply there to fill the columns between the
advertisements; don't look for anything meaningful there. Death of USENET,
indeed.
--
Steve Dyer
dyer@harvard.harvard.edu
dyer@spdcc.COM aka {harvard,husc6,linus,ima,bbn,m2c,mipseast}!spdcc!dyerkarl@triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) (09/02/88)
The `Death of Usenet' has been announced annually for at least the past 6 years, usually during summer. Interesting that it has been `dying' for longer than it was `alive.'
dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale) (09/15/88)
For three years (or perhaps more), a machine called "micomvax" provided the major newsfeed for the Montreal area. It seems that they took most of the load upon themselves, feeding many other sites directly rather than building a distrubution tree. Two months ago, micomvax decided to get out of the news forwarding business. They warned all the people they were feeding, then a few weeks later the flow dried up. A couple of weeks after that, the administrators for many of the Montreal machines met in a bar downtown, and worked out a new distribution network. We now have two independent feeds into the Montreal area. The load of distributing news is spread more evenly over multiple machines, and there is better connectivity in the local distribution network now than there ever was before. Montreal is better off now than it was before micomvax bowed out. I think that this remains a useful illustration of how Usenet works on a larger scale too. As long as there are enough people with the desire to support it, and some spare machine cycles and disk blocks, Usenet will remain connected.