From bjones Thu Oct 25 06:55:51 1990
Subject: Technical links and a growing volume
There is one kind of underdeveloped string in this discussion of the
net's history that I would like to ask people to develop more fully.
(Actually there are about 50 such strings but this one piques my
interest most.) What I am curious about is how various systems
developed to deal with the ever-expanding volume of the net. Steve
Bellovin says that at the beginning the total daily volume over the net
was expected to be one or two articles a day. Obviously that didn't
last long. I remember when I first began to read the news in late
1984 the people here at UCSD who ran the main machine for news on
campus -- sdcavax -- were already talking about turning off news.
They complained that UUCP was tying up one of the ports five or six
times a day, just to download news. Sdcsvax was the Computer
Science faculty research machine and the faculty was getting unhappy
with the competition for resources.
Two years later when I first sat on the campus committee on
computing the issue was still there. The committee recommended that
the campus but a machine strictly for news and mail, which is what
happened in 1988 or so.
If I understand what has been said correctly, this whole thing began
with UUCP -- "a poor man's ARPANET"* -- at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill.
What I would like to understand better is how things moved from that
start to the present means of handling the news. There has been
mention of siesmo as the main news machine for the net, UUNET, the
Telebit Trailblazer modem, and the Internet. How did each of these
come to be involved in the net and how did the net change as a
result? What other kinds of transmission links were there and how
did each of these address the growing problem of volume?
"The whole world wants to know" :-)
bj
* "USENET - A General Access" : Daniel, Ellis and Truscott, no date
Subject: Re: Technical links and a growing volume
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 11:13:48 EDT
From: Brad Templeton <brad@looking.on.ca>
I posted an article a few years ago noting that net growth had almost
excactly matched the decrease in cost of bandwidth.
It started with 1200 bps, unbatched, uncompressed (300 bps for some) in
a day of higher LD charges.
Modems got faster, news got batched, news got compressed, modems got
even faster, LD got even cheaper. Today's uucp with Telebit sends
40 times as much news for the same dollar as the original in 1980.
Since then volume has grown even more, but the new culprit is NNTP.
I expect the number of LD telco links that do a full feed to stay
more level or even reduce. Compression can improve no more than
about 60% in practice. Modems can't get much better on voice lines.
Dynamic feeding can only help non-backbones. We are close to the
physical limit on voice lines. But other things, such as switched
data service and the internet allow that limit to be surpassed.
This is why "imminent death of the net predicted" became so common.
People predicted the net would collapse under its own weight in 82 and
everybody believed it. But each time a new technology saved it.
If there is a gigabit network with bandwidth to spare that is willing
to carry USENET, it has plenty more growth left.
From: Rich Salz <rsalz@bbn.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 12:01:58 EDT
Subject: Re: Technical links and a growing volume
Seismo was "everyone's favorite mail relay" as Rick Adams puts it.
It really didn't do large amount of news. At least not as large as
you'd think it might. :-
>/r$
From bjones Thu Oct 25 09:12:00 1990
Subject: Re: Technical links and a growing volume
>From looking!brad@watmath.waterloo.edu Thu Oct 25 08:30 PDT 1990
>
>Since then volume has grown even more, but the new culprit is NNTP.
What is "NNTP"?
A little bit out of it today,
bj
Subject: Re: Technical links and a growing volume
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 12:59:33 EDT
From: Brad Templeton <brad@looking.on.ca>
The internet news transfer protocol, developed at UCSD.
From bjones Thu Oct 25 11:25:43 1990
Subject: Re: Technical links and a growing volume
Thanks Brad. I suppose that I should know about NNTP,
given that it was developed here. Oh well, it's been
one of those weeks.
bj
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 11:37:02 PDT
From: lauren@vortex.COM (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: mail relays
Going back even farther, let's not forget the tremendous mail volumes
handled for the net by ihnp4 at IH, and before that by harpo at
Whippany.
One of my favorite arguments, of course, is that the net has tended
only to address the traffic *volume* issues, while as a whole not wanting
to worry about the "quality" issues. It's the increase in volume, with
if anything a continuing decay of the signal/noise ratio, which has
driven many of the "old-timers" (including myself) into much more
restricted reading of and participation in the net than some years ago.
Another largely ignored issue all along has been the legal
ramifications of much of the material flowing around. This has
become more acute, with sexually oriented pictures (clearly
pornographic under various local and state laws) being moved around
on the NSF backbone and passed through and in some cases archived on
highly visible sites.
Remember that serious charges were recently brought against GTE, even
though they are an *official* common carrier, for carrying the now
defunct American Exxxstacy (sic) X-rated movie service--even though
they were simply a third party carrier with no control over the content.
They got out of it by dropping the service from the satellite using an
escape clause in their contract--in the process destroying not only
the X-rated service but other R and PG/G rated services run by the
same firm (in fact, they drove the firm out of business).
This was all triggered by ONE politically ambitious district attorney
(in Alabama I believe), who decided to apply his local community
standards to a national service. The vulnerability of the net in
this area, or more specifically of major sites that support the net,
would seem to be growing.
--Lauren--
From bjones Thu Oct 25 13:00:42 1990
Subject: Re: mail relays
>
>From vortex!lauren@rand.org Thu Oct 25 12:40 PDT 1990
>
>One of my favorite arguments, of course, is that the net has tended
>only to address the traffic *volume* issues, while as a whole not wanting
>to worry about the "quality" issues.
While my earlier message came out of my curiosity about technical
solutions to the volume of traffic, I am also curious about what
kinds of attempts have been made address Lauren's issue -- quality.
I know that this was part of the impetus to the renaming but have
there been other changes over time that tried to address the quality
issue? (Aside from things like kill files etc.)
bj
-
From: karl_kleinpaste@cis.ohio-state.edu
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 16:18:41 -0400
Subject: Re: mail relays
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 13:00:44 pdt
From: bjones@ucsd.edu (Bruce Jones)
have
there been other changes over time that tried to address the quality
issue?
4-line limitation on .signature. It can't prevent the user who reads
in his monster .signature by hand, but it stops a _lot_ of trash.
"included more text than new text" error to prevent excessive quoting.
(I have this memory of Brad chastising Larry Wall fairly severely in
1985 or so for creating F/R commands in rn.)
by the user.
All B News-only, I believe. That's unfortunate, IMHO.
Little things, but they help.
--karl
From: smb@ulysses.att.com
Subject: Re: mail relays
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 17:07:17 EDT
> >From vortex!lauren@rand.org Thu Oct 25 12:40 PDT 1990
> >
> >One of my favorite arguments, of course, is that the net has tended
> >only to address the traffic *volume* issues, while as a whole not wanting
> >to worry about the "quality" issues.
> While my earlier message came out of my curiosity about technical
> solutions to the volume of traffic, I am also curious about what
> kinds of attempts have been made address Lauren's issue -- quality.
> I know that this was part of the impetus to the renaming but have
> there been other changes over time that tried to address the quality
> issue? (Aside from things like kill files etc.)
> bj
> -
There have been two primary ways to deal with quality. First, moderated
groups were created for just that reason. Even with moderators, I'm
sure it comes as no surprise that quality still varies widely, depending
on how good the moderator is.
Second, there has been a return to mailing lists for some news-like traffic.
That also acts as a volume filter, simply because the knowledge of the lists'
existence is limited.
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 17:31:59 EDT
Subject: Re: mail relays
>Second, there has been a return to mailing lists for some news-like traffic.
>That also acts as a volume filter, simply because the knowledge of the lists'
>existence is limited.
This rather brings to mind a syndrome that sometimes occurred when an
old Arpanet mailing list got gatewayed to a Usenet newsgroup. After a
little while, some Usenet novice would commit some faux pas, a furious
Arpanaut would flame violently about how Usenet was nothing but bozos
who didn't understand How Things Should Be Done and the gatewaying was
a stupid idea, and the list maintainer would quietly observe that the
gatewaying had indeed produced problems, but it was also producing most
of the real content...
Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 19:21:02 EDT
From: Thomas Lapp <thomas%mvac23.uucp@udel.edu>
Subject: RE: IHNP4
Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com> writes:
> Going back even farther, let's not forget the tremendous mail volumes
> handled for the net by ihnp4 at IH, and before that by harpo at
> Whippany.
This is showing my net.age, I know, but I started networking over
internet around the same time that inhp4 was "retired" from being
THE way to route traffic. (I was a BITNETer for several years before
that).
I had thought that it was a machine at Bell Labs in Columbus, OH.
But you mention IH (International Harvester?). Who, or what was,
inhp4?
- tom
--
Subject: Re: IHNP4
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 19:19:26 EST
From: Gene Spafford <spaf@cs.purdue.edu>
inhp4 was at AT&T Indian Hill, Illinois (outside Chicago -
Naperville).
Some of the other list participants can probably explain this better,
but most of the AT&T machines were named with a location code, a function
code, and a unique id to differentiate multiple machines. At least,
that was the idea, although to an outsider it didn't always seem to be
that way.
Thus, ihnp4 was Indian Hill Network Processor #4
mh was Murray Hill. ak was the Atlanta Wire Works, sb was Southern
Bell, cb was Columbus (Mark Horton was mark@cbosgd for a long time)
plus others.
Then there were the machines in the lab that had (and have) names like
bonnie, clyde, ulysses, research, allegra, lento, harpo, chico, etc.
From: smb@ulysses.att.com
Subject: Re: IHNP4
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 20:48:42 EDT
> Thus, ihnp4 was Indian Hill Network Processor #4
> mh was Murray Hill. ak was the Atlanta Wire Works, sb was Southern
> Bell, cb was Columbus (Mark Horton was mark@cbosgd for a long time)
> plus others.
Yup, Columbus Operating Systems Group D, as I recall.
> Then there were the machines in the lab that had (and have) names like
> bonnie, clyde, ulysses, research, allegra, lento, harpo, chico, etc.
Ulysses was once mhb5b for email. But we called it ulysses. Shortly after
I got there, I got tired of mhb5c being circe, mhb5p being penelope, but
mhb5b not being something with a 'b'. For that matter, I didn't think
that Murray Hill Building 5 made a great prefix for a computer name, so I
rammed through a name change. Folks with very old pathalias databases
will find that the aliases remain.
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 17:59:37 PDT
From: lauren@vortex.COM (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: RE: IHNP4
The BTL Columbus machines, in general, used (and use) the cb*
convention for naming. BTL Indian Hill (just west of Chicago) used
ih* naming. So "ihnp4" was "Indian Hills Network Processor 4". Its
rise to fame was very much the work of Gary M. When he left IH,
ihnp4 dropped its major role in the network very quickly. This
brings up an interesting point, which is that historically, in many
locations, the presence of a major site providing lots of network
mail forwarding functions would be dependent on the work of one or
two people. When those people leave, the machine in question will
often return to relative (or total) obscurity. Another example of
this is Brian Redman and harpo at BTL Whippany...
--Lauren--
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 17:51:15 PDT
From: lauren@vortex.COM (Lauren Weinstein)
Subject: Re: mail relays
It's worth noting though, that even though some of us did push hard
for moderated groups, we were never able to really get them accepted
the way one might have hoped. There would always be the kicking and
screaming and totally inaccurate "censorship" cries. I'd find myself
spending hours writing messages to try to explain why moderation
was important and why this wasn't censorship, etc. I finally got
tired of fighting that fight. Sure, there are some moderated groups,
but without lots more of them, attracting readers who don't read the
unmoderated versions (when they exist) their utility will remain
limited. But I still think they can help a lot.
As for the return to mailing lists... you're right of course. But
it's a sad commentary that we need to rely on "limited membership",
virtually "hidden" mailing lists to keep things under control. Take
this list for example. If it were an unmoderated newsgroup instead
of a limited list, I think we all know what kind of shape it would
probably be in by now...
--Lauren--
Subject: Re: IHNP4
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 20:42:39 EST
From: Gene Spafford <spaf@cs.purdue.edu>
Lauren's comments about people is right on. "Backbone" sites were
usually the result of a specific person at a site where he/she had
fairly extensive control over a machine with sufficient capacity to
handle news and mail load, and where he actively pursued
connectivity.
A list of machine/individuals is perhaps worth note (and nostalgia).
I'll start it with what I remember:
Machine Person Login
Rick Adams seismo seismo!rick (later uunet)
Larry Auton clyde clyde!lda
Fred Avolio decuac decuac!avolio
Steve Bellovin ulysses ulysses!smb
Scott Bradner husc6
Lindsay Cleveland akgua akgua!glc
Erik Fair ucbvax
Greg Fowler hplabs hplabs!fowler
Ron Heiby cuae2 cuae2!heiby
Peter Honeyman allegra
Mark Horton cbosgd cbosgd!mark
Curtis Jackson burl burl!rcj (later moss!rcj)
Robert Lake alberta alberta!lake
Gary Murkamani ihnp4
Mel Pleasant rutgers rutgers!pleasant
Gene Spafford gatech gatech!spaf
Henry Spencer utzoo utzoo!henry
Armando Stettner decvax
Sid Stuart linus linus!sid
Greg Woods hao hao!woods
> mcnc
I'm sure I've missed others, but these were all important folks/machines
Who wants to make the next pass at completing this list?
From: Rich Salz <rsalz@bbn.com>
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 90 09:19:54 EDT
Subject: Re: mail relays
>More included text than new reject.
Which brought showed an embarassing bug when people tried to post
diff's... The original version didn't do "--included" if the
line started with <
From: Rich Salz <rsalz@bbn.com>
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 90 09:19:54 EDT
Subject: Re: mail relays
>More included text than new reject.
Which brought showed an embarassing bug when people tried to post
diff's... The original version didn't do "--included" if the
line started with <
From: Rich Salz <rsalz@bbn.com>
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 90 09:32:18 EDT
Subject: RE: IHNP4
Gary is now at U of Ill, I believe. He gave a talk on ihnp4 for
the Chicago Unix group, and if someone tracks down his mail address
he probably still has the viewgraphs on-line; they make interesting
reading.
He should be on this list anyway.
>/r$
From: smb@ulysses.att.com
Subject: Re: IHNP4
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 90 09:45:42 EDT
> Gary is now at U of Ill, I believe. He gave a talk on ihnp4 for
> the Chicago Unix group, and if someone tracks down his mail address
> he probably still has the viewgraphs on-line; they make interesting
> reading.
> He should be on this list anyway.
> /r$
Gary is both murakami@cs.uiuc.edu and gjm@research.att.com, as you choose.
Gary, wanna join a mailing list discussing the history of netnews?
And if you don't have the viewgraphs conveniently accessible, I do and
can forward them if you'd like.
From: smb@ulysses.att.com
Subject: Re: IHNP4
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 90 10:17:23 EDT
> Re: mailing list/history of netnews
> Sure, please add me to the mailing list. Who wants the viewgraphs?
> Feel free to forward them as you like.
> -Gary
As you saw, Rich Salz suggested that the mailing list might like them.
Bruce, could you add Gary and point him at the archives?
From: smb@ulysses.att.com
Subject: ihnp4/email talk
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 90 10:20:19 EDT
Here, with permission, are Gary's viewgraphs from his talk about
ihnp4 and Usenet. They appear to use the -mm macro package.
>(5.61+/IDA-1.2.8) id AA13397; Fri, 30 Jun 89 14:57:52 -0500
>(5.61+/IDA-1.2.8) id AA32096; Fri, 30 Jun 89 14:59:58 -0500
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 89 14:59:58 -0500
From: Gary Murakami <murakami@cs.uiuc.edu>
Subject: ihnp4/email talk
.S 18
.SA 0
.PH "''''"
.PF "'''\s-2ihnp4!gjm (09/24/88)\s+2'"
.SP 2
.DS C
.I
The History of ihnp4 and
The Growth of the Email Network
.R
.DE
.SP 2
.DS C
Gary J. Murakami
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
uiucdcs!murakami
murakami@cs.uiuc.edu
AT&T Bell Laboratories
research!gjm
gjm@research.att.com
ihnp4!gjm
gjm@ihnp4.att.com
.I
Chicago Electronic Mail Conference
September 24, 1988
.R
.DE
.SK
.H 1 "Mail Foundations"
.nf
1700 B.C., Job 9:25
>"Now my days are swifter than a post;
> they flee away, they see no good."
500 B.C., Cyrus of Persia, Herodotus
>"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night
> stays these couriers from the swift completion of
> their appointed rounds ..."
posts "posta" (Italian)
>posts one day's journey apart
.SK
.H 1 "Mail History"
.nf
1680 London, William Dockwra
> charge, 1 english penny
1692 New York City - Boston
> Boston Post Road -> U.S. Highway 1
1693 Boston, Richard Fairbanks
1737 Philadelphia, Ben Franklin, postmaster
1798 Portland, ME to Savannah, GA, 40 days
> -> 1839, 8 days
1836 Rowland Hill, flat rate, penny paid by sender
> (receiver previously charged by distance)
1839 Pony Express, East cost to St. Louis
> 12 mph, 3x charge
1847 Stamps in U.S.
1858 Street mailboxes
1860 Pony Express, St. Joseph, MO to Sacremento, CA
> ended Oct. 1861, $5 -> $1/ounce
> fastest trip 7 days 17 hours
1864 Mail sorted on train
.SK
.H 1 "Early UNIX mail at Bell Laboratories"
.nf
1979- \fBmail (1)\fR
>UNIX V7, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ
>UUCP - UNIX to UNIX copy
>usend - IBM RJE network
> nusend - NSC HYPERChannel (1982)
1979 \fBUUCP - UNIX to UNIX copy\fR
>D. A. Nowitz, M. E. Lesk,
>\fIA Dial-Up Network of UNIX Systems,\fR
>in \fBUNIX Programmer's Manual, Seventh Ed.,\fR 1979
>transport - uuxqt rmail
>queuing - /usr/spool/uucp
.SK
.H 1 "UCB Mail and ARPANET"
.nf
1982- \fBSMTP\fR
>J. Postel,
>\fISimple Mail Transfer Protocol,\fR
>\fBRFC821,\fR Network Information Center,
>SRI International, Menlo Park CA, 1982
1982- \fBUCB Mail, delivermail\fR
>Kurt Schoens (Berkeley Mail)
>D. H. Crocker,
>\fIStandard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages, \fR
>\fBRFC822,\fR Network Information Center,
>SRI International, Menlo Park CA, 1982
>Mail - user agent
>delivermail - routing/delivery agent
> aliases
.SK
.H 1 "AT&T Corporate Electronic Mail Project"
.nf
>Gary J. Murakami
1982- \fBemail --> paper mail\fR
>opr -mail
> print paper mail, delivery to office
1982- \fBpost(1) name server\fR
>Mike Lesk, Ruby Jane Elliot
>address email by people names
1982 \fBCorporate Electronic Mail project\fR
>computer originated mail to all recipients
> post (1)
> Mail (1 UCB), mailx
> opr -mail
>corporate database
> electronic addresses
> office addresses for paper mail
> (output bin, local printer)
.SK
.H 1 "ihnp4 and Action Central"
.nf
>Gary J. Murakami <ihnp4!gjm>
1982 \fBihnp4 installed\fR, Naperville, IL
> "Indian Hill Network Processor #4"
1982 \fBHistorical UUCP meeting\fR
>Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ 4/82
>HoneyDanBer (HDB) UUCP initiated
>Action Central announced
1982 \fBAction Central - Bell Labs UNIX Registry\fR
>centralized UUCP information
>ihnp4, fix hourly "prank" phone call
> dialcode conventions
> chicago 9= chicago 9=1312
>AT&T internal machines fully connected
> $10,000,000 savings/year
1988 ihnp4 "deinstalled"
> powered-down 02/89
> 6-7 years of service
> computer museum donation?
.SK
.H 1 "Netnews and USENET"
.nf
1982- \fBnetnews\fR
>A news - UNC (N. Carolina)
>B news - M. R. Horton
>ihnss, Bell Laboratories, Naperville IL
>batching, DBM(3) indexed history
>
1983 \fBUSENET (netnews network)\fR
>backbone organized
>increased UUCP load
>large queues, slow large dir search
>execution bottleneck
>very long mail paths for replies
.SK
.H 1 "HoneyDanBer UUCP"
.nf
1983- \fBHDB UUCP\fR
>Peter Honeyman <allegra!honey>
>Dave Nowitz <attunix!dan>
>Brian Redman <harpo!ber>
>connection improvements
> Devices - multi-network
> Dialers - chat scripts
>queues - directory per host
>uuxqt - per host performance, security
>Permissions - improved security
>lockfiles - improved (PID in lockfile)
>DBM(3) indexed Systems file
> Larry Auton <clyde!lda>
.SK
.nf
1983 \fBdomains, gateways, other networks\fR
>P. Mockapetris,
>\fIDomain Names - Concepts and Facilities,\fR
>\fBRFC882,\fI Network Information Center,
>SRI International, Menlo Park CA, 1983
>ARPANET, CSNET (ucbvax, seismo)
>BITNET
>Eric Allman,
>\fISENDMAIL - An Internetwork Mail Router,\fR
>in \fBUNIX Programmer's Manual,
>4.2 Berkeley Software Distribution,\fR 1983
>configuration - rewriting production language
> domain routing
> transport interface
> route optimization
>aliases
>SMTP
>queuing
>complex, incomprehensible
.SK
.H 1 "Pathalias"
.nf
1984 \fBpathalias - email route generator\fR
>Peter Honeyman, Steven M. Bellovin,
>\fIPATHALIAS or The Care and Feeding of Relative Addresses\fR
>paths host!user -> path!host!user
>domains host.domain!user domain!user
>gateways
> arpa .gov, .csnet
> ulysses .homer.att.com(0)
>media media:path
> NET-DK = { ihnp4 ... }
> via-dk NET-DK(DEDICATED+HIGH)
> ihnp4 via-dk:(0)
.SK
.H 1 "Mapping and Routing"
.nf
1984 \fBUUCP Mapping Project - pathalias input\fR
>M. R. Horton, K. Summers-Horton, and B. Kercheval,
>\fIProposal for a UUCP/USENET Registry Host,\fR
>in \fBProc. Summer USENIX Conference, Salt Lake City, 1984\fR
>
1985 \fBtransport addresses\fR
>UUCP Project
>unambiguous
> host!domain!user
1985 \fBsmail\fR
>M. R. Horton
>"simple" domain routing/delivery agent
1985 \fBupas\fR
>D. Presotto,
>\fIUpas - A Simpler Approach to Network Mail,\fR
>in \fBProc. Summer USENIX Conference, Portland, 1985\fR
>routing/delivery agent
>regular expressions
.SK
.H 1 "Other email developments"
.nf
1983 \fBnetword - ECOM (U.S. Post Office)\fR
>email -> paper mail
>defunct
1985 \fBpathparse\fR
>P. Honeyman, P. E. Parseghian,
>\fIA Parser for Electronic Mail Addresses,\fR
>in \fBProc. Winter USENIX Conference, Dallas, 1985\fR
>disambiguate problematic routes
> e.g. down!bruce@asburypark
>graph traversal
1986- \fBATTMAIL\fR
>commercial email service, paper mail
> UUCP compatible, inter-networked
>MCI MAIL (not UUCP compatible)
1987- \fBNNTP - Netnews Transfer Protocol\fR
1987- \fBC News\fR - efficient batch processing
1987 \fBUUPC - UUCP for PCs (home computers)\fR
>increased growth of the UUCP network
.SK
.H 1 "ihnp4 configuration"
.nf
\fBhardware (approximate)\fR
>AT&T 3B20S
>16 dialin modems (8 external/8 internal)
>2 dialout ACUs
>16 Datakit(R) TY lines (in/out)
>1 Datakit multiplexed host interface
> dialout modem pool
>1 RJE link 19.2 Kbps
>1 NSC HYPERChannel interface
\fBihnp4 software configuration\fR
>post, Mail
>HDB UUCP
> local domain handling
> AT&T host optimization
> name server escape
> path/media routing
> post name server
>make - autoconfig
\fBaddresses\fR
>path ihnp4!system!user
>domain ihnp4!host.domain!user
>name ihnp4!gary.j.murakami
.SK
.H 1 "ihnp4 statistics"
.nf
\fBcapacity\fR
>50 MB/day UUCP traffic
>50 MB/day (n)usend traffic
>O(100) hosts queues/day
>O(1000) jobs-messages/day
\fBnetnews neighbors\fR
.ft CW
> 67 news
> 55 att (4 non-IH)
> 3 backbone (1 att)
> 7 chicago
> 1 other (stolaf)
.ft P
\fBemail neighbors\fR
.ft CW
> 2486 all
> 1870 att (AT&T)
> 536 ext (non-AT&T)
> 57 nsc (HYPERchannel)
> 1233 dk (Datakit VCS)
> 432 asp (RJE network)
> 1279 cor (internal dialup)
> 1815 acu (external dialup)
> 1302 nac (Action Central)
> 16274 paths (pathalias routes)
.ft P
.SK
.H 1 "Other experiments at ihnp4"
.nf
1985 \fBUUCP Transport Interface\fR
>network library interface (e.g. NSC NETEX, TLI)
1985 \fBdistributed UUCP\fR
>Portable Distributed UNIX (PDU)
> network file system
>ihnp1, MYNAME=ihnp4
> Datakit mux interface
>mkdir, uudemon.hour rmdir problems
> (SVR3 mkdir system call fix)
.SK
.H 1 "Email Vision"
.nf
\fBnetworks\fR
>UUCP persistence - UUPC on micros
>internet - expanded, FDDI
>global fabric - COLAN, ISDN
>minimize store and forward hops
\fBemail software\fR
>smail/pathalias
>upas/pathalias
\fBaddresses\fR
>bang persistence
>some progress toward domains
\fBcommercial services\fR
>UUNET
>attmail
\fBnews\fR
>centralize
> commercial BBS (e.g. well)
> single news server
> network file system
>continued growth
> scaling problems
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 90 10:37:27 pdt
From: bjones@weber.ucsd.edu (Bruce Jones)
Subject: Another name for the list
>
>From spaf@cs.purdue.edu Thu Oct 25 18:49 PDT 1990
>
>A list of machine/individuals is perhaps worth note (and nostalgia).
>I'll start it with what I remember:
>
>Machine Person Login
>[List deleted]
>
>I'm sure I've missed others, but these were all important folks/machines
>
>Who wants to make the next pass at completing this list?
I'll add a name or two (note that I'm not sure about their old
logins) :
sdcavax Brian Kantor sdcsvax!brian
sdcavax Greg Hidley sdcsvax!greg
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 90 17:13:39 EDT
From: tower@bu-it.BU.EDU
Subject: mail relays
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 90 17:51:15 PDT
From: lauren@vortex.COM (Lauren Weinstein)
I'd find myself
spending hours writing messages to try to explain why moderation
was important and why this wasn't censorship, etc. I finally got
tired of fighting that fight.
--Lauren--
Another facet of 'policing the net', which bears some mention in any
history of USENET.
I don't remember any particular person standing out, though many,
including myself, have taken part.
It be interesting to enumerate the methods and techniques used.
-len
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 90 14:56:51 -0700
From: The Wandering Phew <chuq@apple.com>
Subject: History in the making?
Sort of related to "policing the net", I wonder if maybe history is in the
making. A couple of things that are happening as we speak:
o Apple has, as of the last 24 hours, killed off alt.sex.* on the internal
networks (not apple.com. Why not? Hell, I have no idea) because it was
determined its very existence made apple liable for sexual harassment by
some of the management.
o As part of the hurricane that this is just starting to cause (you can guess,
right?) someone leaked a memo from Xerox. Evidently Xerox has decided that as
of Jan 1, ALL recreational/personal (i.e. non-work oriented) mailing lists
are going away. They are, according to the memo, giving plenty of warning so
that network managers can deal with the expected negative reaction of the
users to this (that goes without saying). They're reason is that the volume
of traffic and the cost of the equipment needed to keep it all going has just
gotten too large, and something has to give. So the toys (so to speak) go.
I'm assuming this memo is legitimate -- it looks like it to me.
I've been sort of expecting stuff like this to start happening, and maybe
this is the beginning, maybe it's two more isolated cases in a continuing
stream. But sooner or later (probably sooner, and no, this isn't the end of
the net coming...) USENET is going to have to come to grips with two things:
+ the "if I want it it's okay" mentality that brought us stuff like
alt.sex.*. At some point someone's going to do something that's going to
make people say "enough" and start cleaning house. I think
alt.sex.graphics, if not putting places over the edge, is really making
lots of folks uncomfortable.
+ volume. Over the years there's been a lot of "how can the technology
handle this traffic?" whimpering -- the traditional "end of the net as we
know it" stuff. But the restriction at Xerox is financial -- they can't
AFFORD to continue the recreational stuff (or at least it's become
non-trivial enough they won't support it any longer. This isn't IBM we're
talking about that has always been actively hostile to recreational
groups, either. Xerox has a strong user community and history). How much
farther can USENET grow in technology before "hiding it in the budget"
stops working?
These both tie into the same thing for me: at some point USENET is going to
have to grow up -- become responsible for its content and be aware of its
use of resources. And, knowing USENET's history, it will do so kicking,
screaming, stomping on the ground, turning blue and screaming censorship all
the way. More and more, I'm seeing places that used to be "whatever,
however" in attitude take new looks at things. At some point, USENET
outgrows it's financial usefulness.
Then what? (and how close is that?)
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 90 18:40:44 EDT
From: Mark Verber <verber@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu>
Subject: Re: History in the making?
I have to agree with chuq... and that usenet will have to grow up or we all
will have trouble justifying it to our orginizations. I had turned off
anything below alt.sex almost a year ago because it seemed that there
were people in my department that would object to alt.sex, but would
be truly upset with some of the groups below it. I concluded, better a bit
of censorship, than to lose everything. I know that Karl is doing the
same thing on tut.cis.ohio-state.edu.
Sigh,
Mark
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 90 18:55:31 EDT
From: tower@bu-it.BU.EDU
Subject: History in the making?
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 90 14:56:51 -0700
From: The Wandering Phew <chuq@apple.com>
These both tie into the same thing for me: at some point USENET is going to
have to grow up -- become responsible for its content and be aware of its
use of resources. And, knowing USENET's history, it will do so kicking,
screaming, stomping on the ground, turning blue and screaming censorship all
the way. More and more, I'm seeing places that used to be "whatever,
however" in attitude take new looks at things. At some point, USENET
outgrows it's financial usefulness.
Then what? (and how close is that?)
This is beyond the scope of this mailing list. You are discussing the
future not the past. I suggest you take this discussion elsewhere.
Ask me off the list, if you like suggestions.
What is happending at Apple and Xerox has happened in the past. Not
everyone carries alt. Many sites don't carry talk. USENET has
adjusted in the past to this site-by-sire de-selection of hierarchies.
It has made USENET less unified and more patchy over time, but that's
part of the anarchy and freedom USENET has always striven for. (and
you can extrapolate my expectations for the future from this ;-).
enjoy -len
Subject: Re: ihnp4/email talk
Date: 27 Oct 90 15:08:33 EDT (Sat)
From: mark@stargate.COM (Mark Horton)
>1982- \fBUCB Mail, delivermail\fR
>
> Kurt Schoens (Berkeley Mail)
>
> D. H. Crocker,
> \fIStandard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages,\fR
> \fBRFC822,\fR Network Information Center,
> SRI International, Menlo Park CA, 1982
>
> Mail - user agent
> delivermail - routing/delivery agent
> aliases
One minor correction: Kurt wrote Mail (aka mailx) but Eric Allman
and was similar in many ways.
>Mark
Subject: Re: Technical links and a growing volume
Date: 27 Oct 90 15:05:16 EDT (Sat)
From: mark@stargate.COM (Mark Horton)
>sdcavax
I trust you mean sdcsvax.
>
>If I understand what has been said correctly, this whole thing began
>with UUCP -- "a poor man's ARPANET"* -- at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill.
>What I would like to understand better is how things moved from that
>start to the present means of handling the news. There has been
>mention of siesmo as the main news machine for the net, UUNET, the
>Telebit Trailblazer modem, and the Internet. How did each of these
>come to be involved in the net and how did the net change as a
>result? What other kinds of transmission links were there and how
>did each of these address the growing problem of volume?
There was a strong mentality that the main cost was the phone bills,
and since nobody saw the phone bills, it was free. In the early days
the net was kept alive by a few SA's who followed Grace Murray Hopper's
immortal words: "It's much easier to get forgiveness than permission"
and just did it. Getting a dedicated machine required money which
required permission and justification - this is happening now in many
places but was hard early on.
The first key machines in this regard were research (for mail) courtesy
Dennis Ritchie and Tom Truscott, and vax135 (for Netnews) courtesy
Howard Katseff. (Of course, duke was key sooner than that, but it was
official at duke, and they didn't pay the phone bills. Ditto for
ucbvax (courtesy many people for email but I was SA for Netnews), which
was a west coast hub but didn't dial anybody.)
After vax135, chico (later harpo) courtesy Brian Redman, and then
Armando Stettner put decvax in as the major phone-bill hub.
After that, the backbone started to form and many sites pitched in, but
the cast of characters changed over time as the SA who kept a
particular machine alive left and the machine gradually decayed or
*whoomp* vanished as management pulled the plug. Many times downstream
sites suddenly found themselves without a feed and had to make sudden
arrangements.
ihnp4 was different. It had official support from the beginning,
thanks to Gary Murakami. However, when Gary left, it didn't vanish,
because it had official support. Doug Price stepped in and did an
outstanding job. ihnp4 finally went away, not because a person left,
but because of a change in heart from management. AT&T decided to
support Netnews (indeed, I lead that project right now) and provide
dedicated machines for it, but at the same time wanted to get off the
backbone. A department head bought a piece of shrink-wrapped software
and found it contained instructions to get support by email: mail to
ihnp4!system!support. He was so tee-ed off at this, and got agreement
from other dept heads, that pass-through email was banned. We were
told to become a leaf, which we largely have done. ihnp4 was finally
decommissioned when att became available as an officialy sanctioned and
supported gateway to take its place (but not forward 3rd party email.)
>Mark
From: Rich Salz <rsalz@bbn.com>
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 90 13:15:32 EST
Subject: Re: History in the making?
I'd prefer we kept this list mired in the past...
From werner@rascal.ics.utexas.edu Mon Oct 29 10:32 PST 1990
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 1990 12:28:14 CST
From: Werner Uhrig <werner@rascal.ics.utexas.edu>
Subject: Re: History in the making?
> I'd prefer we kept this list mired in the past...
>
>
>well, as I was reading the traffic, it occured to me that there
>really is every reason to have a FUTURES-list....(but most people
>on this list should also be on *THAT* list, too ... for, what I
>consider, obvious reasons ;-)
werner@cs.utexas.edu / werner@astro.as.utexas.edu / werner@UTA3081.bitnet
UUCP: uunet!cs.utexas.edu!werner OR ...!utastro!werner
>...it's THAT time of the year again...
>(what time? time for IBM top-of-the-line mainframes to
> SHOW THEIR STUFF !@#%& )
(note on the local IBM-mainframe)
26OCT90 Due to the time change this weekend the system will be
restarted Sunday morning, 10/28, when system load is light.
From bjones Mon Oct 29 10:38:38 1990
Subject: Past and Future
>From: Werner Uhrig <werner@rascal.ics.utexas.edu>
>Date: Mon, 29 Oct 1990 12:28:14 CST
>Subject: Re: History in the making?
> well, as I was reading the traffic, it occured to me that there
> really is every reason to have a FUTURES-list....(but most people
> on this list should also be on *THAT* list, too ... for, what I
> consider, obvious reasons ;-)
"He who controls the present controls the past.
He who controls the past controls the future"
>- Geo. Orwell *1984*
In the archives here at weber is a file called "usenet2". The
file is a collection of messages about what the net might look like
the next time around. If anyone wants to start up that discussion
again I'd be interested in lurking in the background but I would
appreciate it if we stuck to talking about what has happened on
usenet itself in this forum. Lord knows there's more than enough
material for that discussion without getting off into the future.
Thanks,
bj
-
From bjones@weber.ucsd.edu Fri Nov 9 11:34 PST 1990
Date: Fri, 9 Nov 90 10:29:42 pst
From: bjones@weber.ucsd.edu (Bruce Jones)
Subject: Net.motss??
Well, things being what they are I haven't had much time of late to
devote to this activity. I have been slowly editing all the
incoming mail into the list, trying to create as complete as
possible a sense of the history of the net from your comments. It's
extremely time consuming but quite enjoyable.
In the mean time I thought I would toss back one of Gene Spafford's
questions which got missed.
Gene asks:
"Is net.motss in this list somewhere as a milestone?"
Gene also notes the net.motss was inplace before 1984, which means
that it predates my initial involvement with the net. What was it
about motss that prompted Chuq to ask:
"You know, in the current environment of alt.sex.graphics.very.explicit,
doesn't our paranoia over the name of net.motss seem just a bit silly and
anachronistic? (just as an aside)."
What was the paranoia about motss? I can imagine quite a bit of
discussion, given the historical period. I'd like to see some of
it.
Comments?
bj
-
From: Rich Salz <rsalz@bbn.com>
Date: Fri, 9 Nov 90 14:43:59 EST
Subject: Re: Net.motss??
motss -- members of the same sex -- was deemd an easier name to hide
then net.homosexual
Subject: Re: Net.motss??
Date: Fri, 9 Nov 90 15:56:31 EST
From: Brad Templeton <brad@looking.on.ca>
The discussion referred to is over the obscure "what the hell does that
mean?" name that was chosen. Normally, (one would think) one tries to
pick descriptive names for groups that everybody will readily understand.
It was felt at the time that "net.homosexual" or "net.gay" would be a magnet
for negative attention. People would see the name in lists and cause
trouble. The use of an obscure name meant that only those who were "in"
enough to understand the name would get the message, and they were less
likely to complain.
Perhaps this was true. After all, names like "alt.sex.bondage" did
indeed attract negative attention.
Subject: Re: Net.motss??
Date: Sat, 10 Nov 90 18:58:04 EST
From: Gene Spafford <spaf@cs.purdue.edu>
Well, as I remember, back in about 1983, soc.singles was a wild and
crazy newsgroup that had a lot of people posting & reading. It was a
"fun" hangout. A few posts occurred asking about same-sex dating
problems, activities, etc., and a mild (by current standards) flame
war broke out.
In an effort to cut down the volume, and to provide a forum for the
gay & bisexual netters, there was a suggestion that a separate group
be created for them. "net.gay" was proposed, but there was a lot of
opposition to the name for fear it would attract flamers from within
the community, and attract unwarranted attention from people outside
(especially managers without the historical perspective). Many people
could just imagine:
Searching for new groups.
Add net.gay? [yn]
Popping up on their manager's screen.
Anyhow, after much debate, net.motss was put forth as the newsgroup
name. I believe the suggestion was Steve Dyer's. After some
controversy, the group was created, and has more or less flourished
with little outside attention. An occasional flamer wanders in there,
but I believe they ignore them and few problems result.
As I said, that's my recollection. You might fire off an inquiry to
Steve Dyer for his view on it. I never subscribed to the group....
--spaf
Subject: Re: Net.motss??
Date: 13 Nov 90 22:07:56 EST (Tue)
From: mark@stargate.COM (Mark Horton)
The original request was for net.gay, I think. The paranoia was that
if net.gay appeared on the published list of newsgroups, some higher
management person who had barely heard of Usenet would see it, raise
a fuss, and pull the plug from some backbone machine, and the whole
net would come crashing down. The compromise reached was to call it
net.motss, figuring all the people on the net would know what it meant
but the folks who didn't know much about the net would pass it by.
>Mark
From bjones Tue Nov 27 11:21:52 1990
Subject: Maps and mapping
I'm still sorting all the mail into a single history file and today
I'm working through all the traffic on maps and mapping. The
"factual" side of the history of this project is pretty complete --
who made the maps, what they looked like etc. There is even a nice
collection of early maps in the archive for those who want to see
some -- I've separated them from the rest of the stuff.
What is not there is much of a sense of why anyone would want or
need to map the net in the first place. Someone, I think it is Mark
Horton, notes that the maps were used for the "pathalias" program
but beyond that one comment, there isn't much.
For those of you who were involved in the early mapping project, why
did you map the net? Personal interest in cartography? Curiosity?
And, what benefits (including the pathalias stuff) were gained from
the maps?
I know that you all put a lot of time and energy into the project, I
think it would be very interesting to know more about it.
Thanks,
bj
-
Subject: Re: Maps and mapping
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 90 21:08:49 EST
From: Brad Templeton <brad@looking.on.ca>
You got it right. Mapping was first done to provide input to the
pathalias program.
Even in a small net it didn't take long before the Path: lines were huge
(obviously inefficient for replies) and even worse, simply wrong, since
they included paths that did not pass mail. Pathalias, for uucp
mailing, was necessary. It never fully worked, of course, and internet
domains and forwarding took over eventually.
It started with the principle that new sites on the net announced their
presence by filling in a standard form found in the news software and
posting it to the newsite group. People used to read that group!
Then the trend went to filling out the forms in a formal way, so that they
could be parsed.
I suggested to (I think) Mark that we add longitude and latitude questions
to the standard map form, for obvious reasons of making a visible map. It
was many years later that the first visiual maps were made, and Brian Reid
of DEC is the current guru.
The first ASCII maps were made by hand, just for fun. We all wanted to see
what this monster we were creating looked like.
Subject: Re: Maps and mapping
Date: 28 Nov 90 10:22:35 EST (Wed)
From: mark@stargate.COM (Mark Horton)
The first maps (10-30 hosts) were for curiousity and to help publicize
the net. Shortly thereafter, they had an important role for mail routing;
we didn't have pathalias and people would read them to figure out how to
manually route their mail. (The maps were of Usenet, not UUCP, but they
got used for mail a lot anyway because there wasn't anything else.) After
awhile they became very popular at Usenix and people would snap them up,
so there was some sense of satisfying the public.
It wasn't until about 1985 when the real UUCP map data started to become
available in any form useful for pathalias and automatic mail routing.
At that point, there was no longer a need for the pictoral map, and it
had become a hug amount of work (initially for me and Karen, later for
Bill and Karen Shannon.)
>Mark
Subject: Re: Maps and mapping
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 90 22:31:31 EST
From: Gene Spafford <spaf@cs.purdue.edu>
Well, there were a couple of motivations for the maps I used to make.
1) uucp mail was uncertain at best. The more hops in a bang-path,
the more likely it would be to disappear into a black hole. Thus,
having accurate maps and a path rewriter might ensure that mail would
get through.
2) news sometimes took a looong time to propagate from one end of the
net to the other in the days of uucp-only transfer (the impact of NNTP
and UUCP-over-TCP is not recognized by many). Having good maps would
help identify places where the news flow could be short-circuited to
improve propagation *and* reliability.
3) new sites coming on line needed to establish connections. Having
good maps helped identify sites where they could hook in.
4) having complete lists of sites helped cut down on namespace
collisions in the days before domain naming became commonplace.
--spaf
Subject: Arachnet
Date: 11 Dec 90 08:36:50 EST (Tue)
From: mark@stargate.COM (Mark Horton)
This is amusing, in light of what happened 9 years ago.
There was considerable confusion between Usenet (Netnews) and UUCP (email).
Lots of people thought they had a Usenet mailing address. (Some still do.)
It was proposed in late 1981 that Usenet be renamed to avoid the confusion.
Among the top proposals was Arachnet, because of the amazing spider structure.
The proposal was debated at Usenix in Santa Monica in Jan 1982 and a vote
taken. By a less than overwhelming margin, it was decide to keep the name
Usenet. I guess this left the name Arachnet up for grabs.
(If nothing else, it sure made it easy to understand what the title of the
movie Arachnophobia was about. :-)
>Mark
>From clarity.Princeton.EDU!harnad Tue Dec 11 01:22:32 1990 remote from osu-cis
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 90 23:43:46 EST
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad@clarity.Princeton.EDU>
Subject: Arachnet
[Forwarded by Stevan Harnad, Princeton University,
moderator, sci.psychology.digest]
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 90 20:56:23 EST
From: Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear <EDITORS%BROWNVM.BITNET@uga.cc.uga.edu>
Date: 27 November 1990
From: Willard McCarty <Editor@VM.EPAS.UToronto.CA>
Subject: Arachnet: a federation of e-seminars
ARACHNET
A Loose Association of Electronic Discussion Groups
for Scholars in the Humanities and Social Sciences
According to a list recently compiled on Humanist, there are now
more than two dozen ListServ groups alone devoted to the
humanities and social sciences. As more scholars come on-line,
the size of these groups, the diversity of material they have to
offer, and their total number are all bound to increase. These
groups would benefit from a loose confederation that would allow
them to share resources easily without imposing any kind of
restrictions on their manner of operation. We propose to form
such a confederation, which we have named `Arachnet'.
Arachnet will consist of a ListServ list,
Arachnet@VM.EPAS.UToronto.CA, to which all editors of such
discussion groups are invited to be members. On its file-server,
Arachnet will contain a current list of its member groups,
descriptions of each group, and lists of files they hold. The
conversational component of Arachnet will likely be vestigial,
but it may be used from time to time as a means by which editors
of new groups can receive help from their more experienced
colleagues.
If you are an editor or owner of an existing group, you are cordially
invited to join. Please fill out the attached e-form and return it to
<Editor@VM.EPAS.UToronto.CA>, following the format below as closely as
possible.
Please also circulate this note to whomever would be interested.
Willard McCarty Patrick Conner
Editor, Ficino Editor, ANSAXNET
Editor@VM.EPAS.UToronto.CA U47C2@WVNVM
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Please fill in and mail to the editor
(Please simply type over what is in parentheses)
Lastname, Firstname, Email Address
Address:
Titles (academic and other as relevant):
Professional societies:
Describe your email discussion group:
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 1990 9:30:10 CST
From: Werner Uhrig <werner@rascal.ics.utexas.edu>
Subject: Re: Arachnet
> There was considerable confusion between Usenet (Netnews) and UUCP (email).
>there still is.
> Lots of people thought they had a Usenet mailing address. (Some still do.)
>they still do.
> It was proposed in late 1981 that Usenet be renamed to avoid the confusion.
>biggest mistake not having renamed it and renaming it would still
>be the right thing to do (anyway, I put it on my Xmas list ;-)
>(funny thing you should mention it - over the weekend I was doing some
>neophyte coaching and early this morning I was doing some UUCP/USEnet
>related reading adn both gave me reason of deploring that the problem
>is still with us)
>name suggestions? UmailNet and UnewsNet (no, I don't really like
>them, but it beats what we have and I certainly will applaud some-
>thing better)
> ---Werner