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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