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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!stolaf!umn-cs!mmm!dicomed!mecc!sewilco
From: sewilco@mecc.UUCP (Scot E. Wilcoxon)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: Article with the most interesting path
Message-ID: <379@mecc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 7-Nov-85 12:55:58 EST
Article-I.D.: mecc.379
Posted: Thu Nov  7 12:55:58 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 11-Nov-85 06:33:31 EST
References: <626@oliveb.UUCP> <2489@sjuvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: sewilco@.UUCP (Scot E. Wilcoxon)
Distribution: na
Organization: MN Ed Comp Corp, St. Paul, MN
Lines: 43
Summary: Overall route is irrelevant.  Cheapest hops from each site are used.

In article <2489@sjuvax.UUCP> jss@sjuvax.UUCP (J. Shapiro) writes:
>>...
>> The interesting thing is the uucp path.  It starts out in OR, hops
>> across the country thru UT, MD, VA, MA, NJ, IL, NY, and then cross
>> country back to WA, back to OR, and then more reasonably down to CA.
>
>Personally, I suspect that a lot of the cost of netnews occurs in just
>this fashion.  Network links are cheap, but telephone lines aren't.  I

Don't confuse overall cost of an article with the cost to each site of
passing the article on to the next site.  Each site pays only for its
calls to its immediate neighbors.

>...
>... , we would
>find that we could trivially encourage local sites to transmit to each
>other.  The case above is a good case in point.

Don't need a giant database.  Talk to the news coordinators at your
neighboring sites and you can coordinate your regional/city net.  We're
doing it here in MN.  If you don't have a statewide or citywide
distribution yet, set one up with your neighbors.  Remember also that
the net is a social creation, and its humans are as important as its
computers.

>(explanation of IHAVE/SENDME)

>...
>of cases, the long distance stuff could be made to run over already
>existing internal networks which are not nearly saturated.  This would
>...

Some of those long distance hops might well have been over internal
networks.  We can't even know how many computers are sharing one
external name, much less which are dialing through what phone/intercom
circuits.

Further assumptions are left as an exercise to the reader.
Further complications will become apparent in later issues of "Dear Networld:"
-- 

Scot E. Wilcoxon  Minn. Ed. Comp. Corp.         circadia!mecc!sewilco
45 03 N / 93 15 W   (612)481-3507 {ihnp4,mgnetp}!dicomed!mecc!sewilco