Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!ut-sally!husc6!sri-unix!ctnews!pyramid!oliveb!epimass!pesnta!altos86!altnet!edc From: edc@altnet.UUCP (Eric D. Christensen) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,news.admin Subject: Re: Scary Thought ... Message-ID: <1112@altnet.UUCP> Date: Thu, 5-Mar-87 23:02:23 EST Article-I.D.: altnet.1112 Posted: Thu Mar 5 23:02:23 1987 Date-Received: Sun, 8-Mar-87 06:01:27 EST References: <919@smeagol.JPL.NASA.GOV> Reply-To: edc@altnet.UUCP (Eric D. Christensen) Organization: Altos Customer Support, San Jose, Calif. Lines: 45 Xref: mnetor comp.mail.uucp:312 news.admin:206 In article <919@smeagol.JPL.NASA.GOV> earle@smeagol.JPL.NASA.GOV (Greg Earle) writes: >Recently, two people at JPL became recipients of Lauren Weinstein's `uulink' >package for IBM PC's & clones, which provides UUCP capability for them. I've >also seen John Gilmore mention a thingy called `uuslave', which I would >imagine probably does the same thing or something similar (or a certain subset >of UUCP). Now, these `uulink' copies are serial numbers #199 and #200, so it >is safe to say that there's nothing to worry about yet, but I shudder to the >thought of suddenly flooding the net with newsites that are all PC's running >these programs or equivalent. Seems like we have enough sites as it is >without suddenly being deluged with a million PC-DOS machines suddenly >clamoring to be part of Usenet. From both an administrative and logistical >viewpoint, it seems to me like this could present a problem of major >magnitude if everyone and his mother jumps on the bandwagon and starts running >these programs and announcing themselves to news.newsite. Scary thought is right! Not that I'm anti PC or anything, but the number of PCs in the world is huge. I'd be willing to be that a good percentage run modems, and a good percentage of those would like to get on the USENET. Now I don't have any problem with that except for one thing. What's going to happen to the limited bandwidth available to the uucp links if we suddenly doubled or tripled the number of hosts. Also, is it right for a system to tie up someones modem for 2 or 3 hours a day when only one or two users have access? I would tend to say not. Multiuser installations are able to serve many users and provide additional services (i.e. forwarding articles, gateways, mail routing, source archives, etc.) that a PC host just won't be capable of. I think that these issues need to be discussed. I would hate to see PCs banned from the net. Equal access is one of the fundamental principals of the net, but I'm afraid that a VAX is a bit more equal then a PC-XT in this case. (For that matter, what about the ATs running Xenix with ony one or two users?) I would hate to see the net collapse under it's own weight, but I'm afraid that is the direction we are headed in. Let's see if we can kick around some ideas to help solve this problem (hopefully without cutting anyone off). Cheers- -- Eric D. Christensen UUCP: ihnp4!sun!altos86!altnet!edc Altos Computer Systems Inter: edc@altnet.UUCP Customer Support Division AT&T: (408)433-3614 or (408)434-6688 399 West Trimble Rd., San Jose, CA 95131