Xref: utzoo news.misc:1488 news.config:631 Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!faline!thumper!ulysses!andante!princeton!udel!rochester!bbn!mit-eddie!necntc!dandelion!ulowell!page From: page@ulowell.UUCP Newsgroups: news.misc,news.config Subject: Re: The USENET Backbone (Updated: 18 May 1988) Message-ID: <7375@swan.ulowell.edu> Date: 3 Jun 88 21:54:14 GMT References: <4245@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <7348@swan.ulowell.edu> <4275@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> Reply-To: page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) Followup-To: news.misc Organization: University of Lowell, Computer Science Dept. Lines: 56 Posted: Fri Jun 3 17:54:14 1988 spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) wrote: >Can you think of a better way to show the map? Yes, in fact. However, I don't know if I could *do* it. It is to try and arrange the sites roughly geographically, then draw links. See below. Brian Reid's postscript maps are fantastic. Every month I grab the posted ASCII backbone map and hang it on my office wall. My idea of how traffic flowed came roughly from that. Then I saw the postscript map, with things arranged geographically, and my whole idea of the backbone links changed dramatically. Almost all the links are down the US Eastern seaboard or between the east and west US coasts. The drawing below is an approximation. Figure that all the sites in the clusters essentially talk to each other, and that I didn't draw in most of the intercontinental links (that are mostly between the bay area and [rutgers & husc6]). It looks something like (in North America... picture the US and Canada): +-- alberta--------------------------+ | | +-------------------------+ ubc-cs----------------------------------watmath utgpu decvax : utzoo linus mit-eddie uw-beaver------------------------------------------------------------------+ | tektronix----------------------------------------------------+ husc6--+ | +------------------------------------)--------' | | | | | philabs | | +---------)------------------------------------)-bellcore cmcl2 | | | | | rutgers--+ | | | | | | | | | +---------)--------------purdue +uunet | | | | | ucbvax | | | | | | | | hplabs amdahl | +------ncar | | | | | | decwrl ames---+-+ nbires-------------)------------------------+ | | | | | | ukma-----------+ | | | | | | +--mcnc------+ | | | | | | | | | +-----------gatech--------------+ | ucsd-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ I did this in 30 minutes, on line. If I used some graph paper and a pencil first, I'm sure I could get it to look a lot nicer, as well as adding the sites I left out. The point is ... more geographically-oriented maps show where links are either redundant or needed. There are about 8 intercontinental links between the bay area and the northeast corridor alone, just on the backbone (never mind all the cross-country links that aren't listed). Are they all necessary? Probably not, but since they're mostly NNTP links over the Internet, site admins don't worry about the traffic, since they aren't paying for it. ..Bob -- Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept. page@swan.ulowell.edu ulowell!page