Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!inria!axis!coms!axis!philip
From: philip@axis.fr (Philip Peake)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: mail and news in Europe
Message-ID: <575@axis.fr>
Date: 29 Jun 89 15:11:34 GMT
References: <786@redsox.bsw.com> <928@sering.cwi.nl> <29859@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: Axis International, Paris
Lines: 102

In article <29859@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, wisner@mica.Berkeley.EDU (Bill Wisner) writes:
> In article <573@axis.fr> philip@axis.fr (Philip Peake) writes:
> >> Who administers the top-level domains in Europe? If they are maintained by
> >> EUnet/EUUG, do only EUUG members get to join those domains? Or, to be more
> >> succinct, if a company in Outer Boondocks, West Germany polls the US to get
> >> its own mail, will it be allowed to become company.de?
> 
> >Only EUUG members may join EUnet.
> >EUnet was set up by, and is run for the benefit of EUUG members.
> 
> My question said nothing about joining EUnet. I asked if sites that are NOT
> members of EUnet are allowed to enter the Internet domains that EUnet manages.
> I refer specifically to the top-level domains for European countries, such as
> .DE for Germany.
> 
> If EUnet does not allow such sites to join such domains, it is evil, rude,
> and very wrong.

In Europe, there are normally several organisations managing any given
domain (EUnet, BITNET, X400, etc).
Depending upon the country there is reasonable co-ordination between the
people involved - there are agreements to transport each others mail
for instance, and to 'gateway' mail destined for a site on another network
automatically and free of charge.

So, you can register with EUnet, BITNET etc - I don't think that any of these
will accept handling your mail free of charge.

You can start your own network - then negociate with all of the people already
handling managing that domain - providing you pay your own way they will
probably agree to route mail to/from you - but you must do likewise.
You must also do it professionaly - in USENET you send mail with a
hope that one day it might reach its destination - always provided
that some site doesn't use its god given right to re-route your mail,
to change its headers, to use out of date maps etc - we have none of that
in EUnet - the backbone structure is tight, the maps are *at most* hours
old, and misrouted or lost mail are considered serious

So, if you want to form your own network, and map it into .XX, you too
will have to provide a service which the other member networks accept
as being of acceptable quality - you will have MUCH more problems with
other organisations over this than you will ever have with EUnet.

Of course, if you just set up your machine on your own, and call it
'thingy.de' then no-one can or will stop you - but they are under no
obligation to pass mail to/from you, or even to put your machine in their
maps - this is something you do by negociation.

> You can call a non-EUnet site foobar.de without requiring mail for that site
> to pass through EUnet gateways! Many people do not seem to realize this.
> A trivial addition to the .de zone would allow it. This would not hurt EUnet
> at all (in fact, it would bolster their image) and it would definitely help
> make international mail just a little bit easier.

I think that you are confusing the way things are done in the USA, and the
way that are done in Europe ...

> >Tell me how the telecoms system knows the difference between bits transfered
> >via UUCP and those transfered by NNTP ?
> 
> NNTP is a protocol used to transfer USENET over Internet links. I can't be
> sure but it seems likely to me that the transatlantic Internet lines are
> leased, which means that there is a fixed cost to maintain it, not a per-
> packet fee. If those lines have a fixed cost, it won't cost any more money
> to send USENET articles down the pipe.

Internet links (NSFnet and company) have quite severe restrictions placed
upon them - they are for ACCADEMIC/RESEARCH use. They are NOT there to
reduce the costs of people transfering news - especially if it is going to
commercial sites.

The USA <-> Europe link is already (and has been for quite some time) a leased
line - and I *think* that NNTP is already used to transfer news between
cwi and uunet.

Remember that we use a leased line because, given the volume of trafic it is
cheaper than any other means - no-one is going to be able to compete
with a trailblazer - well, *just* maybe they can for News, but that is only
part of the EUnet services.

I have seen people claim incremental costs of ZERO - this is, of course,
NEVER true - you can claim that adding one more site in europe has
no cost because we have a leased-line. Ok, you can say this several times,
and then, suddenly, you find that you have no capacity left on your leased
line, you have to exchange your 64K  line for a 128K line - you find that
you need to add another 1000Mb of disk, you run out of CPU cycles - so do
you say it is free for everyone, untill this happens, then the next one that
joins gives you an incremental cost of half a million dollars - you try
asking that person for that !!!

> Please, no bitching from the UK contingent; I know quite well why NNTP
> to JANET won't work. And incidentally, I do agree with the European who
> opined that care must be taken to avoid clogging those transatlantic wires
> with USENET traffic.

Like the (in)famous news articles offering cars for sale in NJ etc ?
I notice all of these come from AT&T employees - and I suppose AT&T gets
LOTS of money from transporting these articles around the world ....

As far as JANET is concerned, can you do ANYTHING with JANET which works ? :-)

Philip