How to Defeat the Backbone Cabal in your Spare Time
da...@garfield.uucp
with the current Usenet setup (i.e. Backbone and leaf nodes)
may rearrange things to their liking.
Usenet can be considered a directed graph, where the sites composing
the network are the nodes, and the directed connections between them
are the edges. Furthermore, a cost function may be assigned to any
edge in this graph; for our purposes, let this cost be the
average time in hours it takes an article to be delivered on this edge.
We extend this cost function to any path in the graph to be the
sum of all the costs of this individual edges in that path.
Divide Usenet into a number of partitions, such that:
(i) every site in Usenet is in at least one partition.
(ii) each partition is connected (i.e. articles posted
at any site in a partition will reach every other site
in that partition.)
(iii) let A and B be any two sites in a partition. The
_minimum_ cost of delivering a message between these
two sites must not exceed N hours (where N is arbitrary,
say 3 days = 72 hours).
(A better partitioning function may be found. Also note that the
total number of partitions should be fairly small, say, not to
exceed 15. Also, for covenience we will only consider the North
American part of Usenet, since other considerations will come into
play in other cases.)
Here is the fun part. Any article received by a (participating)
site is passed on as normal. Any article *posted* by a participating
host is also passed on as normal. However, the posting site is
also responsible for DELIVERING THE ARTICLE TO AT LEAST ONE SITE
IN EVERY OTHER PARTITION.
The beauty of the system is:
(i) there is no `backbone' - every participating site is
responsible for doing what the current backbone is
presently doing.
(ii) posting sites are responsible for a more realistic
share of the cost of posting an article (most other
partitions will require a long distance phone).
(iii) No software changes are required. (use the L0 option
in your `sys' file).
(iv) Administrave power is decentralized. See (i).
(v) Only sites who wish to participate have to.
(Assuming that only a small number of sites refuse
to deliver all the newsgroups, otherwise participating
sites will have to make an effort to reconnect the
graph a bit by calling `past' offending sites).
(vi) quality of articles may go up (see (ii)).
(vii) less articles may be posted (see (ii)).
Of course, there are several drawbacks to this scheme:
(i) no one forces any site to call _all_ the other partitions,
so some partitions may not receive all messages.
(ii) some sites cannot make long distance phone calls (some
nearby sites will have to take the responsibility - and
the cost - for them).
(iii) Someone has to figure out what the partitions are. This is
a one shot problem though.
(iv) One site in a partition may become responsible for all
or most of incoming articles. To avoid this, every
participating site should be willing to receive articles
from any other participating site. The site to send
articles to in each partition may be picked randomly at
run time (this requires a bit of cleverness), or is
(hopefully) randomly picked when a site `joins' the network.
Comments?
dave
--
.oOo. The UUCP: {utcsri,ihnp4,allegra,philabs}!garfield!dave
o.o.o Mercenary CDNNET: David Janes <da...@garfield.mun.cdn>
.oOo. Programmer "There can only be one!"
Michael Gersten
not the site that posts, it is the user. If you charge the users, then
suddenly usenet is completely silent. If you charge all sites, then
suddenly most sites become listen only. Either one totally changes the
current net.
As an example, I (and a friend) are trying to get our machines
onto the net. We are willing to pay a little for this, but if we had to
pay $50-$150 per month, we would not. Most leaf sites would not. The
result? A much lower trafic bill--and much fewer sites.
Michael Gersten
Views expressed here may not be those of the Computer Club, UCLA, or
anyone in their left OR right mind. And that's the name o' that tune.
da...@garfield.uucp
| This is not quite right. Most sites do not control WHO posts; it is
Nonsense, every site has at least some say in what the users do, because
it is the site (meaning, the adminstrators) who let the users use the
machine. `Write' access to the net can be restricted only to certain
users. In fact we do this here at my site.
| If you charge the users, then
| suddenly usenet is completely silent. If you charge all sites, then
| suddenly most sites become listen only. Either one totally changes the
| current net.
That's what we need to do now - change the net. You are only charging the
user (or site) for what they post - if they do not post, they do not pay
(well, they still pay some other costs for getting other messages to
their site, but that is no worse than normal).
| As an example, I (and a friend) are trying to get our machines
| onto the net. We are willing to pay a little for this, but if we had to
| pay $50-$150 per month, we would not. Most leaf sites would not. The
| result? A much lower trafic bill--and much fewer sites.
Well someone is paying that money, and currently it is the backbones.
If you wish to post $50-$150 (gives you back $100? :-) of articles
a month - which is a *lot* of articles, well maybe you should be
the one paying for it. No one has the divine right to post articles
on USENET.
dave
--
.o.o. The UUCP: {utcsri,ihnp4,allegra,philabs}!garfield!dave
.:O:. Mercenary CDNNET: David Janes <da...@garfield.mun.cdn>
.o.o. Programmer "Well, do ya?"
Michael Gersten
my money and not post any sources or bianaries.
Seriously, this is the very area where pure capitalism breaks down:
hidden costs. If the immediate cost is higher than the immediate value,
you don't do something. No individual in his right mind would pay for
defense if it was optional, since the money could be put to better use
elsewhere. Etc. Dito for education ("If you think education is expensive,
try ignorance"). This is why we have a government, and why we have a
fair amount (too much?) welfare.
Now, you want to charge the individual users/sites. OK, so no user will
post things like sources, since they don't pay back the cost. Result?
Charge the site. But the site doesn't earn anything, so they won't
allow it. Where does it end?
One possibility: charge the reader. The problem is: how? The cost to the site
is inpedendent of # of readers, so the cost would vary based on how many
people read. Or you could charge an average amount on a per newsgroup basis.
This might actually work; however, it discriminates against users at small
institutions in favor of large (economies of scale). There is also the
problem that not everyone has access to a large institution that lets them
read news. Yes, I know its a privilege, but if we start charging, then
users attitudes might start changing. They might regard it as another
compuserve, and consider their use in a similar maner (i.e. What do you
mean I can't use it? I can pay, right?)
I actually got the news source (2.10.3 beta), and found that you can prohibit
specific users...nice. So I was wrong about that.
And as for the $50-$150, if you listen to the horror stories that float
out from (apparently) the backbone, that is what the average site should
be paying to distribute the news. I didn't say we would post $50 worth
of news--but if we had to pay for phone costs to receive 1.5 meg a day
(even if we only get around .5 meg a day by restricting news groups), that
adds up.
Remember: the cost to a node isn't related to how much is posted by that
node. Total volume is.
Michael Gersten
p.s. Why does inews core dump on sys3 Xenix? Anyone gotten it to work on such
a beast? (in insert(), while getting the date, environ gets trashed)
David Wright
> If you charge all sites, then suddenly most sites become listen only.
European sites have been "charged" (or as we see it have been paying
their share of the European backbone sites' costs) for a long time now.
Have you noticed that there are no postings from Europe? No, you haven't.
--
Regards,
David Wright STL, London Road, Harlow, Essex CM17 9NA, U.K.
d...@stl.stc.co.uk <or> ...seismo!mcvax!ukc!stl!dww <or> PSI%234237100122::DWW