"David Boyes (Network Postmaster)" <556@OREGON1>
Tue, 19 Jan 88 13:49:24 PST
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>>
>>1)Non-backbone sites should not be allowed to house peer lists. This
>> situation cannot happen if all peer sites are on the backbone. There is no
>> problem about non-peer lists.
>> Eric I don't find this restriction acceptable. It goes against all the
>work people have been doing trying to get peer lists. Harry
As much as I like the idea of egalitarian participation in sharing
information, I've got to agree with Eric on this one. If a site is not willing
to keep software that can have potentially harmful effects (loops, filling
spool space of your neighbors, etc.) updated in a reasonably timely fashion,
then it seems reasonable to limit participation of that site to activites that
do not discommode others.
If I wrote a object-oriented multiprocessor simulation that communicated
between the nodes here on campus by sending one 20K file per operation with
the status of that operation to all the other servers, then it's fine -- it's
only my local links that are dying under the load and not my neighbors.
Given that situation, suppose I chose to send copies of the necessary
interface programs to somebody at Weizmann Institute (no flames, folk -- I had
to pick an arbitrarily far away site. I've got nothing aginst anybody @
Weizmann...) and they begin using it to improve their throughput. If I update
the program in such a way that using the older version will cause some kind of
catastrophic network loop, it's the responsibility of the back-level site to
upgrade -- especially when the software is free and the maintainer can make it
an automatic process to install the latest version.
In short, it doesn't seem to be that great of a request to say that if you
want to take full advantage of the package then you must keep it updated and
free from harmful side effects to your neighbors.
Then again, what do I know....?
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David Boyes (503) 686-4394 |BITNET: 556@OREGON1
Systems Group |ARPA : 556%OREGON1.BITNET@
University of Oregon Computing Center| CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
UUCP: [your fav backbone]...!tektronix!uoregon!oregon2!oregon1!556
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