Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!turbo.bio.net!lear From: lear@turbo.bio.net (Eliot) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: Internet rules (was: map question) Message-ID: Date: 22 Feb 90 23:30:24 GMT References: <267@hplabs.HPL.HP.COM> <101264@pyramid.pyramid.com> <1990Feb8.012051.7798@vicom.com> <4440@fernwood.MPK.CA.US> <1990Feb11.225848.23276@vicom.com> <10810@saturn.ADS.COM> <101839@pyramid.pyramid.com> <1990Feb21.221637.19317@psi.com> Organization: GenBank Computing Resource for Mol. Biology Lines: 18 To: schoff@psi.com Cc: lear Nearly half the groups on USENET exist because they are converted or gatewayed Internet mailing lists, including such great hits as comp.protocols.tcp-ip, comp.ai.*, comp.theory*, etc (not to mention all the federally supported bionet groups). Netnews and mail are merely transports. The *nice* thing about netnews is that it could be hand configured to make minimal use of the backbones, or to not use the backbones at all. As far as the regionals are concerned, thanks to networks such as yours, as their seed funding runs out, it will become economically harder for them to maintain restrictive use policies (and there are various legal issues involved if they want to orient themselves towards some sort of common carrier, I suppose). You see, it turns out that being picky about traffic and working to an economy of scale are mutually exclusive goals WHEN THERE IS COMPETITION. -- Eliot Lear [lear@TURBO.BIO.NET]