🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1810003@hpiag0.IAG.HP.COM> laubach@hpiag0.IAG.HP.COM (Mark Laubach) writes:
>We are looking at the feasibility of submitting BITNET host
>information into the uucp map project data.  Note that this is not a
>promise just an intent to look into it.  Stay tuned for this.

I've sent the following to Mark privately but I also thought it might
be useful to have some public comment on it.  Note that in my old
job back "home" in KY, I ran a gateway between UUCP & BITNET and also
was a map coordinator.  Both are former duties but even though my
current job doesn't let me hack on e-mail very much I'm very interested
in the subject ..


Anyway, the suggestions for coordinating between Usenet & BITNET:


uhm ...

technically it'd be very simple to push bitnet site data into
the Usenet maps.  There's already a node list available, it'd
be a simple matter to make the following sort of file

BITNETGATE	psuvax1, ukma, husc6, etc

BITNETGATE	ukma.bitnet, psuvax1.bitnet, cunyvm.bitnet, etc


the hard part is to do it right.  Each of the gateways are close
to particular parts of each network (the UUCP net & BITNET).  That is,
what should be done is to come up with some weights between each of the
gateways and all the bitnet machines.  That is, take ukma as an example.
It's close to the branch of BITNET "south" of Ohio State.  All those
sites would have a fairly low weight and as you go beyond Ohio State
the weight should increase.  Especially beyond the Oh.St. -> PSU ->
CUNY links which are chronically overloaded.

It'd be tempting to try a simple approach of "each hop on the network
costs so much in 'weight'".  But some links are chronically crowded
and it'd be better to place a high weight for traversing that edge.

Each of the other gateways has their own areas of BITNET they could
service well.  The same holds true for the BITNET->UUCP direction,
ukma (again) has lots of UUCP links on the east coast and some of
those have good links to other parts of the country but it's not
as direct as it could be.

version 2

ukma	psuvax1.bitnet(weight), cunyvm.bitnet(weight), etc
psuvax1	ukma.bitnet(weight), cunyvm.bitnet(weight), etc

alias entries should also be made for bitnet sites which have Official 
Domain Names.

ukma.bitnet=g.ms.uky.edu
psuvax1.bitnet=psuvax1.psu.edu
cunyvm.bitnet=cunyvm.cuny.edu
etc.



NOTE: I cannot offer ukma's services as an official gateway since I
no longer work there.  I don't know of they'd be interested, they have
enough problems already internal to the site without adding in
problems from the outside.


-- 
<- David Herron; an MMDF guy                              <david@ms.uky.edu>
<- ska: David le casse\*'      {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET
<- 
<- New official address:  attmail!sparsdev!dsh@attunix.att.com