Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!UVAARPA.VIRGINIA.EDU!randall
From: randall@UVAARPA.VIRGINIA.EDU (Randall Atkinson)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: (none)
Message-ID: <8910290319.AA16276@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 27 Oct 89 16:41:05 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: randall@uvaarpa.virginia.edu
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 42

To: fasteddy@sdcdcl.span.nasa.gov, tcp-ip@nic.ddn.mil
Subject: Re: BITNET clarifications...
In-Reply-To: <8910261347.AA09691@gemini.arc.nasa.gov>
Followup-to: comp.protocols.misc
Distribution: inet
Organization: University of Virginia, Charlottesville

The problem of someone somewhere else filling up a node's
spool partition is to my mind serious, as is the ability of users
on a given node to "send" files to themselves and thus get 
disk storage space that isn't part of their account's quota
(both are known problems at BITNET sites). 

I consider "denial of access" to resources to be a security 
concern and yes there are mechanisms in most networking systems
that in greater and lesser ways can do this.  On some systems,
one can fill spool partitions by sending a high volume of mail;
it would also tend to fill up the network channel.

A number of people seemed to feel that I have an "anti-BITNET"
stance which simply isn't true.  I do have a high level of sensitivity
to security (some mail has suggested "excessive" :-).  My own
experience is that many sites simply aren't concerned with it.
It wouldn't be my own decision, but it's their business how they
choose to run their systems (like the %-hack which I dislike a great
deal, but it _is_ in the local part of the address).

This no longer really concerns TCP/IP, so I've redirected
followups to comp.protocols.misc on the USENET side...

The Australian notion of a batch-oriented "getfile" application
sounds interesting and could probably be implemented without
too much trouble on the Internet for anonymous ftp if someone
were so inclined...


Ran

Disclaimer:  As noted originally, I'm an ordinary user here on 
  uvaarpa and have nothing to do with the systems mgmt here.  I
  am involved with internetworking efforts on the systems at work 
  though.