Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!nrl-cmf!cmcl2!phri!dasys1!tneff
From: tneff@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Cut off AT&T? (Was: The death of USENET)
Message-ID: <5156@dasys1.UUCP>
Date: 24 Jun 88 14:38:18 GMT
References: <651@scovert.sco.COM> <30.UUL1.3#935@aocgl.UUCP> <2761@ttrdc.UUCP>
Reply-To: tneff@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Neff)
Organization: Independent Users Guild
Lines: 30

In article <2761@ttrdc.UUCP> levy@ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy) writes:
>The ONLY THING that AT&T is planning to stop carrying, as best as I have heard
>(there has been traffic on internal AT&T groups about this too) is MAIL
>BETWEEN TWO NON-AT&T SITES.  NETNEWS WILL CONTINUE TO BE CARRIED.  The
>analogous thing for the net to do would be to decline to carry AT&T's
>mail BETWEEN TWO AT&T SITES.  (AT&T doesn't, and shouldn't, generate
>site-to-site mail with such routings anyhow.)  So think about it a while
>before you get sore and start planning "revenge."

Dan, this is exactly the point.  (For many of us anyway, if not for the
poster you were responding to.)  AT&T is leaving the backbone and becoming
a gatewayed domain, in effect.  What the net should understand very clearly
is this: AT&T's high volume of traffic with the rest of the net means it
will go from a major *pillar* of the net to a major *burden* on it.  In
the short term AT&T probably deserves a break after carrying so much for so
long; in the long term, if it doesn't carry its weight it will find itself
losing net.friends.  What is USENET, after all, if not "carrying mail"
between two other sites?  If you and I talk via email right now, we rely
on the good offices and generosity of any number of intermediate sites,
few or none of whom have anything to do with AT&T.

The bottom line is this: If everyone took the same decision AT&T just did,
USENET would cease to exist.  Perhaps there's an excuse for the decision,
but I don't like the trend.


-- 
Tom Neff			UUCP: ...!cmcl2!phri!dasys1!tneff
	"None of your toys	CIS: 76556,2536		MCI: TNEFF
	 will function..."	GEnie: TOMNEFF		BIX: are you kidding?