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From: emv@mailrus.cc.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti)
Newsgroups: news.config,news.admin
Subject: Re: Great Lakes news backbone
Message-ID: <548@mailrus.cc.umich.edu>
Date: 26 Jun 88 21:21:18 GMT
References: <537@mailrus.cc.umich.edu>
Sender: usenet@mailrus.cc.umich.edu
Reply-To: emv@mailrus.cc.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti)
Organization: University of Michigan Computing Center, Ann Arbor
Lines: 36

In article <537@mailrus.cc.umich.edu> emv@mailrus.cc.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) writes:
>
>I'm soliciting comments on the organization of a usenet
>news backbone for the Midwest.  I have in mind (more
>or less) the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan,
>Indiana, Ohio, and parts of Pennsylvania and New York,
>as well as the province of Ontario.

I thank the several news administrators who sent me mail
regarding this posting.  It appears as though there's as
much co-operation in the area as I expected, and I 
anticipate that this effort to increase connectivity 
throughout the Midwest will prove generally useful.

From looking at logs here, it appears that the usenet
"backbone" has several unintended members.  Taking a look
just at the articles appearing at this nntp-only site from
uunet shows that most of them come through 3 or 4 paths,
only one of which is mostly made up of "official" backbone
members.  There are also a surprising number of multiple
cross-country hops that show up.

If you are a site on the internet in the midwestern states
listed above, and you find that articles arriving at your
site take an extraordinarily long Path: in getting there,
you are welcome to contact me to arrange a partial or backup
feed to trim down these paths and get articles more efficently.

If you are a site on the internet that acts as a regional hub
or part of a regional backbone, I'm interested in exchanging
locally generated news.  A quick scan of my articles here
indicates that a site in the Pacific Northwest and in the
southeast would be likely to be quite helpful.

--Ed
Edward Vielmetti, usenet news admin, U of Michigan mail group.