Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!decvax!mandrill!gatech!ncar!ames!elroy!cit-vax!mangler From: mangler@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (Don Speck) Newsgroups: news.misc Subject: Re: "NNTP has had a number of very bad effects on the net..." Summary: has raised the economy of scale Message-ID: <7397@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> Date: 24 Jul 88 09:45:08 GMT References: <4277@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> Organization: California Institute of Technology Lines: 55 In article <4277@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu>, fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair) writes: > NNTP hasn't changed the economics > for a UUCP site, save that they might be able, due to the relative > ubiquitousness of the Internet, to get a full netnews feed physically > closer to where they are (and thus cheaper in phone bills). From what I've seen, tcp/uucp and NNTP have made ARPAnet sites *less* receptive to dialup UUCP, so it's likely to be *harder* to get a phone feed from any given ARPAnet gateway, not easier. "We have the ARPAnet; why do we need UUCP?" Well, before NNTP, one needed UUCP to get Usenet. But now individual ARPA sites don't need the UUCP sites anymore. NNTP has introduced a strong economy of scale, leading to a much wider disparity in readers per machine - or more to the point, in *posters* per machine. A typical college Usenet machine now serves hundreds of posters. That's why Usenet now has a hundred thousand undergraduates posting idle chit-chat. NNTP promotes consolidation, not the decentralization that is Usenet's hallmark. Unlike mailing lists, which can be received by any machine, NNTP servers are one per department, with the trend being toward one per campus. This extrapolates to one per regional network. Do you see much rrn'ing across BARRNET, yet? You will... and caching slave servers will hasten the day. As something becomes more and more centralized, it falls under the purview of ever higher levels in the bureaucracy. It becomes *very* visible, to more conservative people, something we never had to worry about with mailing lists, because mail was private. Usenet has a pretty radical reputation. Do you think it could withstand a DARPA review? Centralization brings us back to having critical failure points, where loss of a single machine knocks out a department, a campus, perhaps a regional net. I'm not talking about machine failures; I'm talking about *administrative* shutdowns. For all the fuss made about the AT&T gateway consolidation announcement, the thing that worried me most about it was when our operations manager (who dislikes Usenet) read about the fuss in InfoWorld. Usenet is beginning to come under public scrutiny, like it or not. The loss of AT&T is nothing compared to what would happen if the Internet were kicked out from under Usenet. The FCC's proposed Enhanced Service Provider surcharge could have mostly done it. Usage-sensitive billing on the ARPAnet would kill off many links. Usenet could be completely banned from the Internet by a serious charge of impropriety, such as if MCImail, ATTmail, and Telemail complained about unfair government-subsidized competition, or if misc.forsale were to get a Golden Fleece. By giving away Usenet to the Internet, it now has to answer to a new master, one that can be a lot harsher if crossed. Don Speck speck@vlsi.caltech.edu {amdahl,ames!elroy}!cit-vax!speck