whm@arizona.UUCP (08/14/83)
With respect to Lauren's comments (of about a week ago) concerning
CSNET reliability, let me say that in the year that I've been using
CSNET, it has proven to be quite reliable. There have been several
times when a host has been down or experiencing some sort of software
malfunction, but I can't recall having a message (inbound or outbound)
vanish without a trace. When I send a message via CSNET, I'm confident
that it will either arrive at the target machine or that I'll be
notified in some fashion that the message could not be delivered. On
the other hand, with Usenet and uucp, just figuring out *where* to send
a letter is a problem of constantly increasing complexity.
Furthermore, uucp messages are prone to misadventure at nearly every
exchange and in many cases, if a delivery fails, the letter gets sent
back to uucp on the machine it just came from. I've been on Usenet
for almost three years and I'd say that for me, the lost-without-a-trace
rate of multi-hop mail is probably 20-30%.
Usenet is certainly quite useful, and for established communications
paths is usually reliable, but the real problem is that at a large
number of sites, if a message encounters difficulty, it's probably
going to land on the floor.
I use CSNET for mail whenever possible and recommend that others do
as well. Please note that I'm not saying that claims of CSNET mail
passing into the TZ are bogus, but it has been my experience that the
CSNET staff has promptly responded to the various problems that we have
encountered and that as a whole, CSNET is worthy of trust.
However, don't let me paint a picture that's too rosy. On the whole, I am
unimpressed with what CSNET provides considering the money and manpower
it apparently consumes. More specifically: I think that the annual dues
as stated are somewhat high, especially for small businesses and small
University departments. (Actually, that might not be a fair statement
as they do consider requests for reduced prices. Question: Does anybody
know what the lowest amount paid for annual dues in the Industrial and
University categories are?) Secondly, while the initial mmdf software
supplied to us was of good quality, it forced the use of entirely new
end-user mail programs for CSNET mail. CSNET later supplied software
to allow use of delivermail with mmdf, but forget to elaborate on a
number of problems and curiousities caused by interfacing the two
systems.
While I'm here, let me say something about "Usenet Inc. == CSNET?".
CSNET appears to fit most visions of Usenet Inc. except for the fact
that it doesn't support news. The news support question reduces to
one of cost because news can be suitably disguised as mail. The
problem is that if one PhoneNet site feeds another news via an
intermediate host, the news must be paid for twice. Direct PhoneNet links
solve this problem as would an Arpanet host feeding a number of PhoneNet
sites.
Usenet and CSNET have organizational structures that are nearly
opposites of each other. Does anyone really think that Usenet could
be completely reorganized into Usenet Inc.? The key word there is
"completely". Let's say that all but 30 sites reorganized into
Usenet Inc. The 30 sites continue to operate as they have. You'd
have Usenet as it was about two years ago. You'd also have CSNET and
Usenet Inc. in competition. I think that the reasonable thing to do
is to not junk Usenet, but rather to maintain the basic premise (no
central organization), and explore ways of making it better.
One final question: Why do people join CSNET? I've talked to several
people at sites that alreay had Usenet access and then subsequently
joined CSNET. The primary reason was: legitimate Arpanet access.
Bill Mitchell
whm.arizona@rand-relay (preferred!)
{ihnp4,kpno,mcnc,utah-cs}!arizona!whm (the real_ TZ)