Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!nosun!fpssun!celit!dave
From: dave@fps.com (Dave Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: rwhod protocol and >42 users
Message-ID: <1520@celit.fps.com>
Date: 10 Oct 89 22:48:32 GMT
References: <1178@celit.fps.com> <7370@xenna.Xylogics.COM>
Sender: daemon@fps.com
Reply-To: dave@fps.com (Dave Smith)
Distribution: comp
Organization: FPS Computing Inc., San Diego CA
Lines: 27

In article <7370@xenna.Xylogics.COM> loverso@Xylogics.COM (John Robert LoVerso) writes:
>If you are really hot on producing a new protocol, how about this.
>Simple observation shows that most of the information rwhod gives
>out doesn't change all that much.  So, perhaps a more reasonable
>approach, would be to use a delta protocol, where any given packet
>would include some new whoents and a few bits to delete old whoents.
>Thus, over a period of time (10 minutes?), a rwhod-listener might
>pick up a complete list of users.

This sounds like a reasonable idea.  Of course for it to be at all useful
multiple vendors would have to support it.  I'll try to put some work in
on it and then perhaps get it merged into the BSD stuff.

>
>Finally, you can just chuck rwhod and use Sun's "rusers/rup" instead.
>It works, albeit not very well.
>

I don't see any advantage to rusers over rwhod.  It generates a broadcast
packet (albeit a smaller one) and then it makes everyone on the network
do some work.  We had enough trouble already when people discovered
"perfmeter" and started hitting rstatd up for information every 10 seconds.

David L. Smith
FPS Computing, San Diego
ucsd!celerity!dave or dave@fps.com
"Repent, Harlequin!," said the TickTock Man