🚀 go-pugleaf

I have been thinking about an idea which can reduce the network traffic 
greatly.  It is about the bandwidth that the mailing lists unnecessarily
consume.  

It is no secret that much of the traffic on the Internet, and some other
networks for that matter, today is due to mailing lists.  Mailing lists
have been rapidly proliferating and the number of subscribers is always on
the rise.  Almost every one I know is on some mailing list or another and
some of them get more mail from the lists than from persons.

Seemingly, the designer(s) of the mail protocol didn't have in mind this
lists phenomenon.  What is happening today is amazing.  Suppose there are
50 subscribers on host x in New Jersey to a given list based at host Y in 
California.  Then if a message sent to the list, 50 identical copies are
sent all the way from host y in CA to host x in NJ.  If only one copy is
sent to host x in NJ and the duplication takes place locally, rather than
at host y, a great deal of unnecessary traffic can be eliminated.  All that
is needed is software at each host to do the duplication.  The envisioned
protocol works as follows:

1. Joe at host x subscribes to the mailing list at host y. 
2. The moderator of the list subscribes the host, rather than Joe, to the
   list.  At the same time the moderator sends Joe's user's id to 
   the duplication software on host x, for this particular list.
3. When a new message arrives to the list, copies are made only to the 
   subscribing hosts.
4. Each host identifies the list from which the copy arrives.  And with the 
   help of the table containing the names of people on this list, it places
   a copy in each subscriber's mail box.

While totally transperant to the user, this protocol can significantly
reduce the amount of traffic due to mailing lists.  It should be noted
that this does not decentralize the mailing list, and therefore does not
require the sophstication of a distributed mailing list.  
It should also be noted that the duplication can be done at the domain
level, rather than the host level, which may have some advantages but also
some drawbacks..



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|Hamed Nassar               |Internet  : hxn8477%njitx.decnet@njitc.njit.edu |
|EE Department              |UUCP      : bellcore!argus!mars!nancy           |
|NJ Institute of Technology |CompuServe: 74000,130                           |
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