Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!husc6!spdcc!kaos!blblbl!henrik
From: henrik@blblbl.UUCP (Larry DeLuca)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Net saturation
Summary: saturation and stop passing the buck to the !@@#$#$%%&*( Internet
Message-ID: <570@blblbl.UUCP>
Date: 16 Jun 88 17:58:17 GMT
References: <3772@saturn.ucsc.edu>
Organization: Camp Random, Lexington MA
Lines: 43

In article <3772@saturn.ucsc.edu>, koreth@ssyx.ucsc.edu (Steven Grimm) writes:
> It seems like the UUCP part of USENET is being saturated by all the
> binaries and talk.* postings that everyone is yelling about.  It seems
> like a good solution to just encourage more sites to get on the
> Internet; it is nowhere near saturation, and provides services (ftp,

First of all, getting on the Internet is a bit more involved than buying
a 1200-baud modem and finding a neighbor.  Permission to connect to the
ARPAnet portion, for example, is given primarily to universities and 
institutions that sponsor DARPA research (like MIT) or who create networking
products or support services for the net (like BB&N or FTP Software, Inc).
I believe the Network Information Center at Stanford Research International
(the NIC) are charged with giving people permission, etc.

Second, it's much easier to get your employer to agree to a $149 modem when
you have a spare phone line than it is to put in a T1 link (or even, God
Forbid, a 9600-baud dedicated line - which will suck big pink hairy rocks).

Third, *** THE INTERNET IS MORE OVERLOADED THAN THE USENET EVER THOUGHT OF
BEING RIGHT NOW ***.  About two years ago (I will presume you are a freshman
or sophomore and so weren't around when it happened), one septmeber the
Internet started to suck big pink hairy rocks.  It got worse.  You'd open
up a TELNET connection, wait, wait, wait, and eventually it would time out
while you tried to log in.

BB&N went to work to find an answer (SRI on the west coast).  The verdict:
The Internet had "run out" of bandwidth.  Fixing a number of bugs in existing
TCP and gateway code allowed a breather, but it was realized then that it was
only a matter of time before there weren't any more corners to cut, and 
things would have to go.  Something along the lines of INFO-ARMAGGEDON sprang
up on the appropriate wizards' mailing lists and SF-LOVERS and most of
the other "fun" groups that are ARPAnet-based were quivering in their sockets
hoping to see the light of day again.

The ARPAnet is undergoing very serious re-structuring, and will probably go
away as we know it sometime in the not-too-distant future, being replaced by
a better distributed network that should handle the situation and traffic
demands being made on it better.

					larry...

PS:  *** PLEASE *** don't flame me for missing a historical detail or two --
I have tried my best to provide a useful answer to the question, not the 
history of the ARPA World, Part I.