Aihnss.1056 net.news utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ihnss!warren Tue Dec 29 10:23:13 1981 More usenet comments Subject: USENET replies 1) I think that reorganization of categories to suggest a logical structure for "official" categories is a good idea. There can be infinite debate as to which are business and which are personall, but just having some rational would help. This, in combination with a better procedure for formation of "official newsgroups, that allows for some time between the proposal of a newsgroup and the first massive outpouring of material, would allow sites to make their own decisions about whether or not to carry them. We should certainly continue to allow people to form their own groups (like the btl groups that don't go outside of the btl sites), that aren't necessarily intended for general consumption. 2) I feel strongly that this is the right forum for discussion of the network, and not the USENIX conference, which many can't attend. net.news seems to reach all of the people with a current interest. I suggest that some time at USENIX be devoted to discussion of USENET (or whatever), and that include a summary of proposals made here to obtain feedback from those who aren't currently participating. 3) I will repeat my call for a more organized distribution system. I still think that this is essential if we are going to start carving up the network by having lots of sites that don'e read and forward ALL. I would suggest that there be some core of sites that agrees to distribute all of the "official" categories, and that other sites attach to one or more of these with no particular commitment to forward everything. If you are atached to a core machine, then you can be sure that you will get all of the news. If you attach through someone else, then its up to you and them what you get. Each private empire would be encouraged to attach directly to the core in two places (for redundancy), rather than through other private empires). (I find return paths like ucbvax!decvax!ittvax! ... amusing, particularly when they terminate in another machine in my own company. I wonder what the lawyers would think of that one!) 4) Let me add my strong support for the protocol that tells each machine what news is available before trying to transfer it. autodialer (and even dialup) port time is scarce on many machines, and what commonly happens now with many sites that get news from multiple sources is that lots of time is spent uucp'ing over files that are then thrown away. netnews is a major consumer of machine time, and a scheme like this could be used to help reduce the time burdon. It has the useful and desirable side effect of allowing both machines to filter what gets sent. (i.e. A can filter what it sends to B by not including certain items in the list that gets sent to B, and B can filter what it receives by only asking for things in it's .sys file.) I think that problems associated with once a day polling can be fixed by scheduling 2 polls (one to get the lists of what is new, and a second one to ask for the files). As it is now, I don't think that polling is a significant hinderance in news distribution, as generally things that originate in uucp land get here quickly while some of the fa material is very late. Happy Hacking Warren Montgomery ihnss!warren Bell Labs, Indian Hill Naperville Ill. ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.