I need you, the list owners, to give input to a group of technical people about the gravity of a LISTSERV problem. The message I am forwarding is pretty technical and it is not possible to translate to layman's terms without making some unfortunate simplifications, which tend towards slightly overestimating the impact of the problem by generalizing it to cases where it would exist anyway. But I feel I have to make this description in order to allow the people who are actually impacted to give their opinion, and not just people with a CS degree. The change described in the lines marked '>' would considerably reduce the amount of US recipients erroneously subscribed to european peers when there are US peers as well (only peered lists are affected - well if the list isn't peered there's only one place to subscribe people to :-) ). Michael Gettes, whom I am copying on this message, is wondering how serious a problem it really is. On the other hand, the proposal he is mentioning is unlikely to be formally approved by CREN and the core sites within a reasonable time frame, as there have been a number of non-technical objections (such as "it shouldn't be the business of X to decide Y" - there is a pretty good agreement about the technical aspects of running a gateway). In order to avoid skewing the results, please do not answer if you have never run a peered list. Again, this only affects the owners and subscribers of peered lists, and I just want to make sure people who answer have first-hand experience with the situation. The Reply-To: field has been set to point to the list where this is being discussed. Thank you. Eric *---------------------- Original message follows -----------------------* On Sun, 07 Mar 93 01:05:47 +0100 [log in to unmask] said: > Good. I had a long phone conversation with Michael on thursday and, > barring any further political problem or unexpected objection from the > core sites, we are going to do the same thing we did in EARN to solve the > same problem - register all the core sites as "logical INTERBIT", in > principle by VERS9304. Each core site will have the option of either > implementing a genuine INTERBIT using suitable software (and in > particular a Netdata-capable mailer), or simply routing the INTERBIT node > to another core site willing to take the load (in practice, this means > PUCC). My delay in responding to this list is once again due to having responsibility to projects and problems at my own site. I apologize if my lack of participation has hindered any progress. First, Eric seems to have misunderstood our conversation. I wanted to confer with him about the problems and what it might take to resolve the situation. I told Eric that I would speak with a couple of the core sites that may be impacted if we do this. However, from my perspective, the problem seems to not be as drastic as portrayed. The only INTERBIT traffic that Europe is being hit with from the USA is from the peered lists. Otherwise, PUCC is getting the rest of the USA INTERBIT traffic. I point this out because there has yet to be any further movement on the proposals. I will not rehash the problems thus far. I would prefer NOT go about adding all these sites to INTERBIT without there being closure on the issues of the proposals. Are there any technical objections? If there are no technical objections, then I hereby formally ask that these proposals 'be accepted or moved up a level'. Eric, I know you have no appreciation for this request. You and I disagree here. I am not saying I do not wish to resolve the INTERBIT situation or not do as the 'network' wishes... but the bottom line is that proposals have been put forth, EARN has agreed to them, and nobody within CREN seems to give a hoot. If it is the opinion of people that the proposals should be completely scrapped... then you should speak up. If nothing is said, and nothing else happens, then, due to the lack of any procedures, the proposals will be considered accepted and we will add sites to INTERBIT as quickly as possible, but carefully. Folks, I understand that we have accepted some degree of responsibility in all this... and with that responsibility, along with John Wagner, we are trying to act responsibly and carefully to make a highly visible service of BITNET stable and as clean as possible. To then try and move it forward and so on. I too am getting tired of this... but we alone cannot make these decisions. If certain systems in EARN are currently getting overloaded due to the lack of action on this side of the pond, I would appreciate those sites letting me know and hopefully we do something to alleviate your pain for the time-being. /mrg