Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!CS.CMU.EDU!Ravinder.Chandhok
From: Ravinder.Chandhok@CS.CMU.EDU (Rob Chandhok)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.appletalk
Subject: Re: Broadcast
Message-ID: <15209.624195701@GNOME.CS.CMU.EDU>
Date: 12 Oct 89 11:41:41 GMT
References: <8910110517.AA25944@dartvax.dartmouth.edu>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 39



>From:  c11234@d1.dartmouth.edu (Stan Dunten)
>Subject:  Broadcast
>
>Has anyone else out there been hit by Broadcast? It is a Chooser thing that
>provides mac to mac communications. At this time there are 250 students
>at Dartmouth waiting for Broadcast messages.

Yeah, ain't it fun ?  Broadcast is as much fun for students as "talk" was.
But NBP uses quite a lot of network resources, you got that right.

...
>Has anyone had experience with NBP cacheing?

I don't really know how you could cache NBP (in the gateway or bridge?) and
not violate the protocol.  It could be done, but it seems like the wrong
solution.  Surely Sidhu is thinking about this problem.

>Could Apple perhaps slow down the Chooser?

Chooser gets its NBP retry and interval parameters from the RDEV, so you
might try and get the author or Broadcast to set the parms differently in
the next release.  See IM volume IV for details, the settings live in a
GNRL resource of the RDEV.

But really, what do you expect from something called "broadcast" ?  Network
friendliness?  I think you all are going to have to make a policy statement
like "Using Broadcast uses an inordinate amount of network resources, and is
not considered reasonable on this campus.  Please refrain from using it".
Kind of like "Printing your resume 100 times on the public laserwriter is
not reasonable".  

Or, make more zones to partition the net.  Then you only have to worry about
zone names and all that crap :-)

Let us know what you do, Stan.

Rob