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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: ont.uucp
Subject: Re: news feed & NETNORTH/BITNET
Message-ID: <6271@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 6-Jan-86 14:00:09 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.6271
Posted: Mon Jan  6 14:00:09 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 6-Jan-86 14:00:09 EST
References: <1886@utcsri.UUCP>, <1041@utcs.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 38

> -the rules say so. To quote for the usage guidelines "All usage of
>  BITNET must be consistent with its goal to facilitate the exchange
>  of non-commercial information in support of a member institution's
>  mission of education and research"...

This sounds remarkably like how most of us justify Usenet as it stands.
The wording is consistent with a large fraction of the Usenet traffic,
even if the way it is interpreted isn't.

>  ...NETNORTH/BITNET is a 'store and forward' type network with only one
>  unique path to each node.  USENET garbage would quickly grind the
>  network, as well as everyone's spool, to a halt.

Usenet is also a store-and-forward network with basically one unique path
to each node.  I recognize that IBM boxes are not as robust and capable
as our Unix machines :-), but this problem does not seem insuperable.  We
cope with it every day.

> For example, if
>  York crashed, the news for Humber College, McMaster, and Laurentian
>  (as well as several York nodes) would pile up at Guelph.  So multiply
>  net.sources.mac and net.sources by the number of receiving sites #
>  downstream from York and the spool at Guelph quickly fills.

No, because the stuff isn't (shouldn't be) send from one central point
to everybody; it would go to York and the generation of multiple copies
for Humber etc. would occur there.  This is the way it works now.  And yes,
having a site go down for a while does tend to produce pileups, although
there are ways of controlling that.  Again, I realize that IBM hardware and
software cannot cope as well as Unix :-), but the problem is neither new
nor intractable.

> -NETNORTH/BITNET already has several moderated discussion groups....

Good, so there is precedent for this sort of activity.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry