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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!harpo!floyd!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!microsoft!decvax!decwrl!amd70!dual!fair
From: fair@dual.UUCP (Erik E. Fair)
Newsgroups: net.flame,net.mail,net.news
Subject: Fantastic Elastic Plastic USENET addresses
Message-ID: <137@dual.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 4-Nov-83 03:57:17 EST
Article-I.D.: dual.137
Posted: Fri Nov  4 03:57:17 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 3-Nov-83 02:42:59 EST
Organization: Dual Systems, Berkeley, CA
Lines: 73


Did you know that ucbvax is only six hops away from the furthest site
on the entire net? This interesting statistic was generated in about 4
hours of real time on a Vax-11/750 and lots of INGRES inquiries.  I
generated the whole tree (i.e. the shortest paths from ucbvax to
everywhere) and found this out. I'm sure my database doesn't completely
reflect the whole net at any given moment. It's just too dynamic, and
too big to keep my database completely validated. However, since I am
insane, I try.

Did you know that people routinely use 10 and 15 hop addresses that
take letters bouncing from the east coast to the west coast and back
again? News just provides a return path which reflects from whence an
article came. It is, by nature, not optimal since the net works by
`pass it on'.  Just this evening I got a letter from one of the alux?
sites which bounced all over Holmdel, NJ, and Murray Hill, NJ then
through Naiperville, IL, and finally through decvax (Merrimack, NH) to
decwrl, amd70 and here.  I replied to him with a three hop letter from
here to ucbvax to ihnp4 and finally to alux?. I have seen stuff from
the East coast of the US bounce through Europe before getting here.

Now, imagine how much that clutters up the network.

(pregnant pause)

The USENET (and the larger UUCP network) have exactly the same problems as
the ARPANET, but greatly magnified by three things:

	1) *Many* more sites (although,
		the Internet is growing fast these days...)

	2) *Much* slower network speed.
		(i.e. all basic information propagates more slowly)

	3) Lack of enforceable control.
		(i.e. we can't beat a site into running 2.10.1, or anything
		else vaguely sane, once the site can speak uucp)

The ARPANET has solved their routing problems by burying it in table
driven software. The attendant administrative problem is to get all of
the host liaisons to update their host tables when a new site gets
added. Also software updates and validation are a big pain. The
NCP -> TCP/IP conversion was lots of fun for the people at the Network
Information Center, and ARPA itself.  (for those who don't know,
ARPANET underwent a network wide protocol conversion on January 1, 1983
and *many* sites just dropped off the network because they weren't
ready, after two years of warning! Most of them are back by now)

Our problem is that the network requires explicit routing paths, and the vast
majority of network users don't keep the routing tables around (or in their
heads for that matter!) and compounding that, neither news nor the intervening
sites (mail forwarders) attempt any optimization of paths. A very simple
lookup with `uuname' and examination of news mail reply for sites that the
local site talks to, could simplify things immensly, and it has the added
benefit of encouraging more links to different places. (i.e. the more
places your local site talks to, the better this sort of optimization becomes).
Now I realize that uuname only lists the sites that you talk to and not
when or how often, but it's a start, and it doesn't force maintainance of a
new table just for news (although that might be an option).

Well, news maintainers? Want to add a quick hack to recmail for the next
distribution?

In the interest of keeping this short (!!), I will say no more, other than
to quote Heinlein: "If this goes on..."

Comments to the net please. I got enough mail cluttering my mailbox, pleading
for an answer.

	quixotically yours,

	Erik E. Fair	{ucbvax,amd70,zehntel,unisoft}!dual!fair
			Dual Systems Corporation