Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!uwvax!oddjob!mimsy!mangoe
From: mangoe@mimsy.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: The death of USENET
Message-ID: <11929@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: 12 Jun 88 22:21:35 GMT
References: <56228@sun.uucp> <8545@netsys.UUCP>
Reply-To: mangoe@mimsy.umd.edu
Distribution: na
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 21

One thing that strikes me about Chuq's proposal is that it proposes a "news"
response to a "mail" problem.

At&t's announcement doesn't mention news at all; indeed, if they simply cut
off the news, there would be no need for the kind of announcement they made.
But the announcement specifically refers to the volume of mail passing
through ihnp4 as a cause.  And given the prevalence of pathalias, inhp4's
traffic will visited upon some other site-- REGARDLESS OF THE EXISTENCE OF
NEWS.

And that is the important point.  If we assume that (a) the mail generated
in response to news articles is proportionately small, and (b) that mail
volume is more or less an increasing function of network size, then
completely deleting the news will have only a stopgap effect.  The increasing
volume of mail will continue to drive backbone sites off the net.  Now, I
suspect assumption (a) is probably false.  Nevertheless, there is a lack of
logical connection between the symptom and the cures proposed.  The loss of
ihnp4 says a lot about problems in routing and transport and next to nothing
about content.

C. Wingate