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From: sewilco@mecc.UUCP (Scot E. Wilcoxon)
Newsgroups: net.news.adm
Subject: Re: A proposal to distribute costs
Message-ID: <549@mecc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 15-Aug-86 23:20:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: mecc.549
Posted: Fri Aug 15 23:20:22 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 17-Aug-86 10:39:28 EDT
References: <-127674843@sysvis>
Reply-To: sewilco@mecc.UUCP (Scot E. Wilcoxon)
Organization: MN Ed Comp Corp, St Paul, MN
Lines: 38
Summary: faulty assumption: shorter distance is cheaper and preferred.

In article <-127674843@sysvis> george@sys1 writes:
>
>Just to get productive discussion going here... What do you think of the idea
>of setting up one USENET "master site" per telephone area code?  This would
>allow DISTRIBUTED RESPONSIBILITY in getting USENET traffic organized within
>each sector.  New sites might query the master site for locating feeds.  Area
>code mod.maps would be kept and updated by master sites for their own areas.
>...

You're assuming that sites in geographic proximity are connected to each
other.  This is not true due to differing networks, transmission methods,
system loads, and administrative/personal reasons.

I think one of the MN area codes sends most or all its mail/news through
a different MN area code.  Then there's North Dakota, which can only be
accessed through Minnesota sites (Huh? You have to go through area code X
to reach area code Y?).

A "master site" is a good idea, but runs into similar problems as the
"geographic domain" idea.

You must particularly remember the cheap communications within entities
(corporations, agencies, projects, LATAs, states, countries) which tend to
have gateways where they are cheapest or most beneficial.  [Hmm, maybe this
is why X.400 uses "companies" as major address components?]

USENET is a cooperative meta-network with many odd-looking links which are
very logical to the two site administrators involved. ("Logic" includes
"that's the policy")

Personally, I think we need some distributed database technology to manage
net maps and news/source archive sites.  (Anyone with applicable dist-DB
knowledge want to compare wild ideas?)
-- 
Scot E. Wilcoxon    Minn Ed Comp Corp  {quest,dicome,meccts}!mecc!sewilco
45 03 N  93 08 W (612)481-3507 {{caip!meccts},ihnp4,philabs}!mecc!sewilco
	Laws are society's common sense, recorded for the stupid.
	The alert question everything anyway.