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From: schwartz@latour.colorado.edu (Mike Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: NetFind and its Internet load
Message-ID: <1991May6.173923.174@colorado.edu>
Date: 6 May 91 17:39:23 GMT
References: <1991May2.180737.29852@csn.org> <EMV.91May3032230@poe.aa.ox.com>
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In article <EMV.91May3032230@poe.aa.ox.com> emv@ox.com (Ed Vielmetti) writes:

> My major problem with tools like NetFind is that although they address
> the "resource discovery" problem for a single user, they don't have any
> positive side-effects for the rest of the internet.  Nothing about
> NetFind adds to any Internet infrastructure; it doesn't make the problem
> any easier for the next person down the line or somewhere else who has
> the same problem.  In comparision, the efforts of the various X.500
> projects produce something tangible that the rest of the network can
> consume later.

Maybe this is too simplistic of an interpretation, but it seems your
argument boils down to the fact that NetFind is basically a client of
existing services, rather than a new service in its own right (like
X.500).  But from a user's perspective, this distinction is irrelevant.
What counts is whether the user can find the information they need, how
easily, and at what cost to the network.

It's true that keeping information in a server would allow that
information to be cached for future searches, but I have found that if
someone is "reachable" by NetFind, it is usually pretty easy to find
them with NetFind.  There isn't much need to look at what someone else
did to search for that person.  As an aside, searching for more general
types of resources (like anonymous FTP files) is a harder problem, and
the architecture I use for that project does utilize the results of
previous users' searches in facilitating future users' searches.

I think your objection to a tool only helping one user at the time of
use, without contributing to other users by its specific use, is really
wrong.  If this were the standard against which all software was
compared, we would get rid of most of the software in the world.

I also think your view of what is "tangible" is biased by your role as
moderator of comp.archives.  This is a nice contribution to "network
infrastructure", but as I see it, generating information collections
(which is what both comp.archives and X.500 do, in a general sense) is
only one way for users to get and share information.

In fact, I believe it makes more sense to search for some types of
resources where they naturally reside than it does to build a database
about them, since the database needs to be populated and kept up to date.
I see at least 3 cases where this can be true:
	1.  Dynamic, timely data.
        2.  Data with problems of transfer of authority (i.e., where people
            may not be willing to relinquish control of their data to
            relatively centralized administration, like a server per site).
        3.  Large information spaces of the nature that only a small
            fraction of the data will ever be needed (and hence the effort
            to populate a database will not be effectively amortized).
Internet white pages fits at least (1), since users move around, and
tracking their movements in a database presents administrative problems.
I believe it fits (2) and (3) as well.

 - Mike Schwartz
   Dept. of Computer Science
   Univ. of Colorado - Boulder