Xref: utzoo news.misc:1071 news.config:376 Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!epiwrl!epimass!jbuck From: jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck) Newsgroups: news.misc,news.config Subject: Re: The USENET Backbone (Last changed: 10 December 1987) Message-ID: <1798@epimass.EPI.COM> Date: 4 Jan 88 17:50:04 GMT References: <2802@arthur.cs.purdue.edu> <14191@oddjob.UChicago.EDU> <19508@clyde.ATT.COM> Reply-To: jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck) Organization: Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, CA Lines: 22 Matt and Curtis and other curious people: One way to automatically generate a backbone map is to use a "transitive closure" algorithm: assume certain "obvious" sites are on the backbone and then collect paths that lead from one backbone site to another, add them to the list, and so on. I wrote some awk scripts to do this, and to do do other operations on a list of "Path:" headers, and they can be obtained from the comp.sources.unix archives. I believe the archive name is "getpaths". The result? The backbone is about twice as big as Spaf's map indicates it is, pretty much a strict superset. For the most part, the "extra" sites don't want to be on the map for political reasons. Political reality #1: Usenet is much more dependent on the Arpa Internet and NNTP than the backbone map would indicate. -- - Joe Buck {uunet,ucbvax,sun,decwrl,}!epimass.epi.com!jbuck Old internet mailers: jbuck%epimass.epi.com@uunet.uu.net Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them. -- Richard Bach