>>
>>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....?
----------
 
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