Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!WVNVM!U0A61 From: U0A61@WVNVM.BITNET (Bryan, Jerry) Newsgroups: bit.listserv.policy-l Subject: BITNET Restructuring Proposal Message-ID: Date: 4 Feb 90 02:25:13 GMT Sender: Discussion about BITNET policies Reply-To: Discussion about BITNET policies Lines: 66 Approved: NETNEWS@PSUVM Gateway X-Acknowledge-To: Comments: To: BITNET-2@TCSVM.BITNET In-Reply-To: Message of 02/02/90 at 14:42:10 from JHB@NERVM.BITNET >To the best of my knowledge BITNET has NOT yet changed its membership >rules to allow the use of BITNET II links in place of 9600 baud leased >lines and until we are informed of such a change in policy we will not >consider moving to BITNET II. Hmm, this came up a few months ago, and I think that BITNIC's interpretation of the requirement is entirely wrong. My recollection is that BITNIC took an absolutely "letter of the law" approach, saying only 9600 baud connections were allowed. Someone please correct me if I am representing BITNIC's views incorrectly. Anyway, I have read the requirement several times, and probably if you take an absolute "letter of the law" interpretation, anybody who is running anything other than 9600 baud is in violation and should be kicked out of BITNET. This would include not only VMNET sites, but anybody who is running traditional connections, but running them at a speed different from 9600 baud. Under this "letter of the law" interpretation, the whole state of West Virginia would be in violation because our sites are connected to each other via 56KB Ethernet bridges running JNET (among many other things) over DECNET. We are also running VMNET between VAX's and IBM machines, rather than using a 9600 baud connection. As I recall, the state of Texas chimed in with a similar story, and I am sure that there are numerous similar situations. Repeating myself, I suggest that any statement that you have to run at 9600 baud is just plain wrong. I would suggest that this is true even if the statement is made by BITNIC or by the Board. If they say so, they just haven't thought the requirement through. The "spirit of the law", and the clear intent, is that if you want to join BITNET at 9600 baud with a traditional synchronous line, you can. The intent was to provide a low cost, simple connection, using standard vanilla vendor hardware and software. For example, a VM site cannot be forced to run MAILER or LISTSERV or RICEMAIL or any such thing. A VM site can use NOTE and RDRLIST etc. and be a member in good standing. I tried for years to get a friend at another site to run MAILER, but he did not want to, and he replied (correctly) that BITNET did not require MAILER, only RSCS. However, I don't see anything in the requirements that *prevents* anybody from exceeding the requirements, either hardware or software. The only catch on the hardware end is that one site cannot force another site to go above 9600 baud if they don't want to. At least that's the way I read the requirements, and that is the way most of us have interpreted them. Otherwise, most of us would have to be considered in technical violation one way or the other. It seems to me that the Princeton proposal maintains this "least common denominator" spirit. As I read the proposal, anybody that wanted to connect in at 9600 baud could still do so. Despite my (perhaps) somewhat radical opinion on this, it has to be observed that VMNET in and of itself does offer a considerable potential for routing table chaos, and therefore its implementation will require considerable care rather than taking a laissez-faire approach. There is no problem if anybody replacing a 9600 baud link with VMNET connects to exactly the same node or nodes. However, if 9600 baud links are converted to VMNET links to different and/or additional nodes, the network could easily become full of loops. It seems to me that the Princeton proposal addresses this problem in a very sensible and workable fashion. I am cross-posting this to POLICY-L. I am not sure which list is the best for continuing the discussion of 9600 baud vs. VMNET.