Xref: utzoo news.misc:1490 news.config:634
Path: utzoo!linus!spdcc!husc6!ukma!david
From: david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae)
Newsgroups: news.misc,news.config
Subject: Re: The USENET Backbone (Updated: 18 May 1988)
Message-ID: <9513@e.ms.uky.edu>
Date: 2 Jun 88 01:17:25 GMT
References: <4245@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <7348@swan.ulowell.edu>
Reply-To: david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae)
Organization: U of Kentucky, Mathematical Sciences
Lines: 52

In article <7348@swan.ulowell.edu> page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) writes:
>I can't decide what the rutgers-ukma link is.  Two paths?  Does the '+'
>mean all the connected sites talk to each other?  Although it looks like
>rutgers is the center of the Usenet universe, some links are triads
>(rutgers/gatech/mcnc, rutgers/cmcl2/husc6, rutgers/ukma/gatech).

The "+" between ukma, rutgers, gatech and husc6 are all NNTP links that
each of us has with the others.  At least, ukma has links with the other
three and rutgers and gatech are connected, I don't know husc6's links
very well.

"triad" is probably a bad word.  We each have normal type nntp links
with each other.

>Since I assume this is all NNTP traffic, I wonder how much Internet
>traffic would be cut by dropping some of those links, or making them
>mostly unidirectional?

That's an interesting thought.  There have been a number of backbone
sites created soley because of the NSFnet.  I know that before we
got on NSFnet we were STRUGGLING to find money to pay phone bills
and even resorted to making a link with an IBM mainframe over BITNET
to even have one full feed.  The same has happened all over the
country.

A thought I had today was whether or not the rapidly increasing traffic
loads have anything to do with all this new connectivity that the
net is finding.  A year ago it took quite a bit of effort on my
part (and I'm pretty well motivated as far as Usenet goes) to have
that one full feed.  A less motivated version of me wouldn't have
been able to keep it going and thus this site wouldn't have been
able to generate much traffic.  Now we've got really reliable news
here and there's lots of traffic coming in which is prompting the
local users to generate lots of traffic.

food for thought ...

>I also wonder about linus ... we're a hop away from husc6, and I don't
>see much traffic through linus.

Yeah, isn't the net a wonderful thing?  We set up these links and then
can't predict the way messages will propogate.

>Are these maps generated by hand?

Yes they are.

-- 
<---- David Herron -- The E-Mail guy                         
<---- s.k.a.: David le casse\*'   {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET
<---- 
<---- Goodbye RAH.