Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!alberta!ncc!lyndon From: lyndon@ncc.Nexus.CA (Lyndon Nerenberg) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: How did this end up here? Message-ID: <10300@ncc.Nexus.CA> Date: 25 Jun 88 20:43:17 GMT References: <2244@homxc.UUCP> <10301@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <14802@oddjob.UChicago.EDU> <10333@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <16233@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Reply-To: lyndon@ncc.UUCP (Lyndon Nerenberg) Organization: Nexus Computing Inc. Lines: 29 In article <16233@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> bob@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) writes: > >Distribution lines don't seem to be a really reliable way to constrain >the spread of an article. I don't know why. I am in the process of doing a propagation analysis of the biz distribution, and noticed the same thing. It seems to be caused (for the most part) by sites who set up entries for their downstream feeds like this: downstream:all.all,!local,!local.all,!to.all,to.downstream:F: I guess the idea is it's easier to restrict a few known (and stable?) distributions rather than try to stay on top of changes in the entire group tree. I don't think this is a good thing, given that alt.all and biz.all should only be fed on request of the downstream site. Interestingly enough, most of the sys files I received containing this type of entry were from AT&T internal sites. Maybe they think it's easier to maintain things this way. Maybe this is partly to blame for the increasing amount of "flow through" traffic AT&T is complaining about ? [ This also explains the not too polite messages I received from a few sys admins wanting to know why 'biz' control messages were soiling their systems. ] -- {alberta,pyramid,uunet}!ncc!lyndon lyndon@Nexus.CA