bar@datapoint.com (Brian Ruptash) (12/10/88)
As a newcomer to the Toronto news community, I've been keeping a
closer-than-usual eye on what's coming through my system and why.
I've noticed the following peculiarity, and wonder if anyone else
has any comments on it.
As I understand, the "tor.news.stats" newsgroup is forwarded between
all local adjacent systems that support news, as a mechanism to
keep an eye on regional UUCP congestion. That implies that the
group is forwarded not only downstream and back upstream, but
sideways as well, as a means of identifying problems with primary
news feeds.
can, ont and tor appear to be used as both the regional newsgroup
hierarchies and distributions. That means if I put a
"world,tor.news.stats" in my sys file for other than my upstream
and downstream news feeds, only those postings with a distribution
of world will be forwarded. Apparently, however, sites are posting
with a combination of world, tor and local (I wonder how the postings
make it out of these last systems, unless they forward "all"). If
I say "world,tor,tor.news.stats", the site gets not only tor.news.stats,
but all tor groups. That would necessitate saying
"world,tor,tor.news.stats,!tor.general,!tor.whatever,..." (Dave
Sherman suggests "world,tor,!tor.all,tor.news.stats", which is a
tad more efficient).
I guess the observation is twofold; firstly, postings to tor.news.stats
should probably be distribution world, to simplify the sys file
entries for adjacent systems which are simply exchanging these
statistics, and to avoid unnecessary propagation of the other
regional newsgroups. Secondly, it seems that since a sys file
doesn't distinguish distributions from newsgroups, the names of
regional newsgroups should be distinct from the regional distributions
themselves, to better facilitate distinguishing between the newsgroups
propagated and the geographical distribution. Note that the latter
is just an observation, as it would undoubtedly be impractical to
change the regional distributions at this point.
Of course, the problem could be better solved by news distinguishing
between distributions and newsgroups in its sys file format.
Does any of that make sense? Or am I out to lunch?
--
Brian Ruptash | Internet: bar@datapoint.com
Principal Architect | UUCP: {uunet, utzoo}!dptcdc!bar
Datapoint Corporation | Phone: (416) 222-8005cks@ziebmef.uucp (Chris Siebenmann) (12/13/88)
In article <176@dptcdc.datapoint.com> bar@datapoint.com (Brian Ruptash) writes: ... >If I say "world,tor,tor.news.stats", the site gets not only tor.news.stats, >but all tor groups. Personally, I don't see the problem with this; indeed, I suspect tor.news should be side-propagated as well. That only leaves tor.general; fairly harmless for the simpler sys file. >Of course, the problem could be better solved by news distinguishing >between distributions and newsgroups in its sys file format. Fixed in Cnews. Especially if you're a small site, Cnews is great and wonderfull and <insert praise here>. It's also a good way to get familiar with sh and your C compiler and make if you aren't already familiar with them. :-) -- "Would that Aza Chorn had teleported Bates elsewhere and not removed so charming and preposterous a folly from our skyline ... but then he could not have known, not being raised around these parts." Chris Siebenmann uunet!utgpu!{ontmoh!moore,ncrcan}!ziebmef!cks cks@ziebmef.UUCP or .....!utgpu!{,ontmoh!,ncrcan!brambo!}cks