Received: from falcon by gos.Ukc.AC.UK Over Ring with SMTP id aa13091; 30 Jan 89 16:03 GMT To: mg@ukc.ac.uk Subject: news/recent discussion with stc/stl Date: Mon, 30 Jan 89 16:02:58 +0000 From: cmd@ukc.ac.uk ------- Forwarded Messages Received: from kite by falcon.Ukc.AC.UK Over Ring with SMTP id aa27504; 25 Jan 89 19:58 GMT To: uknet@ukc.ac.uk, cmd@ukc.ac.uk Subject: Re: News and mail changes at STL From: Pete Collinson Organization: Computing Lab, Univ. of Kent, Canterbury, UK Phone: +44 227 764000 x7619 Date: Wed, 25 Jan 89 19:58:18 +0000 Message-ID: <14129.601761498@kite> Sender: pc@ukc.ac.uk What it was all about... I hope I gave the right answer - ------- Forwarded Message Date: Wed, 25 Jan 89 19:21:10 GMT From: David Wright Subject: News and mail changes at STL To: pc@ukc.ac.uk Cc: andrew@stl.stc.co.uk, dww@stl.stc.co.uk, mes@stl.stc.co.uk I don't know if mes or andrew have told you about this already, but we are at last getting rid of 'acer', the old VAX780 plus Yorkbox that is the main STL gateway onto the net, and replacing it with 'maple', a Sun 3/110 with a Sunlink X.25 interface, which we hope will be more reliable than the Yuckbox. Maple not only has 2-3x the performance (and 1/20 the floor space!), it will *only* be used as the mail/news gateway - Acer has had a heavy user load too. Maple is up and running on our net, but not yet on X.25 - mes (Mel Steele) is now getting that tested. No doubt he'll contact you when he has the mail system ready to set up; I'm concerned with news, and once mail is OK I'd like to make some changes in the way we handle that. Past experience suggests that getting X.25 all set up and OK takes a long time, especially if BT are involved, so I think it will be a while before we switch over Acer's line to Maple; first there will be a testing period during which we have test traffic on Maple and the real stuff stays on Acer. And I'm not sure when we will be ready to start that test - if all goes well it could be this week, but March is more likely!! At present we get our news feed via arran.tcom.stc.co.uk - arran is a VAX750, even slower than Acer. At one time STC Telecomms were going to stop feeding news, and we were about to take over the feed, but then they found a new source of funds, and the arran service looks secure. But it is slow, and also I wasn't too happy about it being turned off for 2 weeks over the Christmas period - it took a long time to catch up on news (and probably some mail got bounced). Our own link to arran is very good - for news it's nntp over Ethernet--Kilostream--Ethernet. The delay seems to be in getting news from ukc over the fairly slow line, while simultaneously feeding several other sites. How is your news feed load at present? Could/would you provide additional news feeds over X.25 (PSS)? I would like us to have 2 points of entry into the STC net for news. Would that be a problem for you? Obviously we'd call you! If you don't want to take the load of an additional feed, perhaps you could just feed us lon/uk/eunet articles; at least we'd get them fairly promptly. Or maybe stl should become the main news feed point into STC - when we became the main mail feed point we decided not to take over news too because of the load on Acer and the poor performance etc. of the Yuckbox, but with the new machine, and a fast nntp feed to arran, it might make sense (NB we haven't suggested this to tcom.stc yet - I don't know if they'd welcome one less comms link to run, or object to loosing direct contact if you fed us insead of them; I'll bring it up with them if you don't feel you can feed us both). If you were to feed news to stl, what protocol would you prefer? NNTP? NIFTP? Maybe we could set up a test feed with just uk or uk/eunet groups? Note that the above is just a suggestion, it hasn't been discussed much even here yet, as until I know your opinion there is no point in doing much planning. Also note that there will be NO change to the present mail/news arrangements on Acer without adequate warning, and that following the final switchover the X.25 address (and possibly other characteristics) of Maple will be the same as Acer has now, (during the test period we will use a separate PSS link on Maple). - -- Regards, "Are you sure YOUR password won't appear in RTM's next list?" David Wright STL, London Road, Harlow, Essex CM17 9NA, UK dww@stl.stc.co.uk ...uunet!mcvax!ukc!stl!dww PSI%234237100122::DWW - ------- End of Forwarded Message ------- Message 2 Received: from kite by falcon.Ukc.AC.UK Over Ring with SMTP id aa01868; 26 Jan 89 0:17 GMT To: uknet@ukc.ac.uk, cmd@ukc.ac.uk Subject: Re: News at STL From: Pete Collinson Organization: Computing Lab, Univ. of Kent, Canterbury, UK Phone: +44 227 764000 x7619 Date: Thu, 26 Jan 89 00:16:59 +0000 Message-ID: <15661.601777019@kite> Sender: pc@ukc.ac.uk - ------- Forwarded Message Date: Wed, 25 Jan 89 23:10:58 gmt From: David Wright Subject: News at STL To: andrew@stl.stc.co.uk, mes@stl.stc.co.uk, pc@ukc.ac.uk X-Vms-Mail-To: INET::"pc@ukc.ac.uk", MES,ANDREW > We don't see lon. groups - are they worth having? I don't think there are any - I was refering to lon distribution. There are not many articles with this. I believe the LUUG meeting notices got out to lon only, though I could be wrong. > I think that we don't want to be involved in internal politics! No question of that! In fact there are not going to be any - it's to avoid misunderstanding that might lead to problems that I told you my suggestion hadn't been discussed with our news feed (arran) yet. If you are willing to feed us both, no problem. It will improve reliability and timeliness of news for us both, as when one of us has PSS problems, the other will automatically keep them up to date by the wonder of mutual NNTP. It might save you occasional trouble too, as except if we BOTH lost something we should be able to update each other in the event of a problem, instead of having to ask you to re-batch and send lost articles. (I don't know how often this happens?). It would also give a better service to the sites we feed. If, however, you are unwilling to feed us both on a long term basis then I may suggest a change-over to the arran people, explaining why I think it's a good idea, but if they say 'no' then we'll leave the feed as it is now. My reason for telling you about the idea before suggesting changes to them is that depending on what you're happy to do, there may not be anything to suggest. > We don't want to send some newsgroups here - some newsgroups there. > We deal fairly efficiently with batches as long as they are the same > batch. I am sure that we can deal with another batched site, especially > if it means that we lose a UUCP news feed. OK, I suggested only uk/eunet at first as I thought that would mean less comms processing for you, but now I realise that it's the batching that you are concerned about, no problem - I'd rather take everything anyway! > For NIFTP, the mechanism we use is to simply poll a site on PSS, and > bill them communication charges on a monthly basis. This is done by a > different group at UKC. I don't think that we can run nntp into you at > present. Again as I expected, except that I'd assumed you'd want us to call you (as we do for mail at present). Presumably the comms charges are just the BT PSS charges (maybe plus small billing charge)? Also, would you be able to send news between 18:00 and 6:00, when I believe the PSS charges for UK calls are lower? With day-time traffic if your queue got too big, perhaps. I have agreed with mes etc. that a bit of extra PSS traffic is no problem, but I'll have to check with him again if we're likely to have an extra item on the bill from ukc - almost certainly not a problem, but I'm not sure if it's a seperate budget or something. > The best thing would be for one of you to decide where the news is to > go and let us know what you want to do. If you want news to transfer, > I see no problem in running batches in parallel for a bit so that you > can ensure things are working. As I've said, the best thing from my point of view would be to leave the arran (.tcom.stc) feed running unchanged, and add a new maple (.stl.stc) one. But if you don't want to do that, we will discuss, agree, and inform you. What I'd like to see is a situation like that in parts of the USA, where the net is a mesh rather than a tree. There are already some duplicate feeds, for example we provide a prime feed to concurrent, and tcom a secondary one. But accepting ukc is the only practical way in from mcvax, I'd still rather see / /---stl--< / || \ mcvax--ukc || \ || / \---tcom-<-- \ than the present mcvax--ukc----tcom==stl /|\ / \ / | \ / \ Comments? P.S. Do you know if any UK sites are running C News or News 3.0? Regards, David Wright STL, London Road, Harlow, Essex CM17 9NA, UK dww@stl.stc.co.uk ...uunet!mcvax!ukc!stl!dww PSI%234237100122::DWW - ------- End of Forwarded Message ------- Message 3 Received: from kite by falcon.Ukc.AC.UK Over Ring with SMTP id aa01936; 26 Jan 89 0:25 GMT To: David Wright Subject: Re: News at STL In-reply-to: Your message of Wed, 25 Jan 89 23:10:58 gmt . <0091f67717e0e180@ash.stl.stc.co.uk> From: Peter Collinson Organization: Computing Lab, Univ. of Kent, Canterbury, UK Phone: +44 227 764000 x7619 cc: uknet@ukc.ac.uk, cmd@ukc.ac.uk, andrew@stl.stc.co.uk, mes@stl.stc.co.uk Date: Thu, 26 Jan 89 00:25:07 +0000 Message-ID: <15690.601777507@kite> Sender: pc@ukc.ac.uk I am doing all this from memory, since I always forget who is calling us how. I think that all three of us are talking UUCP at present - so you are polling us to get things. I think that this was done because it was possible for you to fund that internally - where an external bill for the same service would cause difficulty. I have some feeling that this stopped us moving to NIFTP before. Stc is calling us in the phone and you are coming in over PSS. However, if news was going out on NIFTP - then we will poll you direct. NIFTP is set up to work this way, someone sending a file does the call. It is possible to do reverse charging over PSS - but we cannot support that at present for technical reasons - which are being worked on. It would be an EXTRA bill from UKC - it would be monthly not quarterly. It would not be added to your uknet bill. Yes the charges are direct PSS charges + I think we pass on the VAT we have to pay. I don't think there is any overhead. I don't think there is differential time charging on PSS. I am willing to be corrected in that view. But we would expect to be able to send news when we wanted - as soon as it hits the FTP queue. FTP spends a lot of time trying to poll people and I resent that loss of CPU. We don't want to (can't afford to) run an additional/special news batches for your site. I hear what you say about setting up a mesh but a) BT wins as well. b) We are a little worried about loading up OUR machine and prefer to use our limited power to ship news to points which can then distribute it wider - we are talking about IMPROVING your service - in some ways I want to worry about PROVIDING service for new site trees. Also, I like to keep a little in reserve - like if the head of a site tree drops out for some reason and we need to feed sites until things work out. c) We do have limits on the number of simultaneous access ports. d) We prefer to send over PSS than the phone - which is what we are doing now. We have more PSS ports than phone lines. I suspect that STC is getting locked out of the phone line from time to time. e) Meshes do occur out there in userland on less loaded machines than ours - we do see news coming from several points. I would prefer to send to the MOST reliable and fastest connection in STL/STC so that everyone is happy. I would favour a shift from the phone connection to a PSS connection (if we can) for shipping news - it's faster/more realiable over PSS. OK. Now you see that everything is not cast in stone - and I hope you can see what we can and cannot do. Let is know what you WANT to do. PS. I am unsure if any one is running the new news code. We will wait here until it becomes solid - for obvious reasons. ------- End of Forwarded Messages   Received: from falcon by gos.Ukc.AC.UK Over Ring with SMTP id aa13516; 30 Jan 89 16:18 GMT To: mg@ukc.ac.uk Subject: mail.* groups Date: Mon, 30 Jan 89 16:18:27 +0000 From: cmd@ukc.ac.uk For info ... I am replying, will cc to you. ------- Forwarded Message Received: from kestrel by falcon.Ukc.AC.UK Over Ring with SMTP id aa25961; 30 Jan 89 16:09 GMT Received: from cs.glasgow.ac.uk by kestrel.Ukc.AC.UK via Janet (UKC CAMEL FTP) id aa28990; 30 Jan 89 16:08 GMT Received: from paama.cs.glasgow.ac.uk by hawaii.cs.glasgow.ac.uk; Mon, 30 Jan 89 16:09:54 GMT From: Jem Taylor Date: Mon, 30 Jan 89 16:08:52 GMT Message-Id: <2420.8901301608@paama.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> To: Andrew.Findlay@brunel.ac.uk Subject: Re: mail.* newsgroups Newsgroups: local.system.admin In-Reply-To: <11230.8901271401@Suleika.me.brunel.ac.uk> Organization: Comp Sci, Glasgow Univ, Scotland Cc: mail.admin@cs.glasgow.ac.uk, uknet@ukc.ac.uk, usenet@ukc.ac.uk, taylor@cs.glasgow.ac.uk In article <11230.8901271401@Suleika.me.brunel.ac.uk> Andrew.Findlay@brunel.ac.uk writes: >Thanks for the checkgroups message, we should now be synchronised! > >I am a little worried that the groups accept news postings without >apparently forwarding them to the mailing lists concerned. Perhaps the >groups should be marked 'moderated' (in which case UKC will have to >hold a translation table) or just 'non-postable'. I hope 'popular demand' might help UKC decide to carry mail.* groups and to do this; of course some mailing lists might not want to have a two-way gateway :- uk.sendmail.workers for instance is explictly a one-way gateway; only people who know how to mail to the list are 'in' enough to do so ! That is why the original 'To:' line is discarded by our mail-news gateway - so that the name of the mailing-list is not available to newsreaders. non-postable might be better - I don't know how to do this in B-news; if you can tell me how then I will do so in the next checkgroups. In the long term I suggest that 1) Moderated mailing lists should be marked as moderated newsgroups and have aliases at ukc or at glasgow.cs (can inews's mailpaths file allow different backbones for different newsgroups ? If so, how ? ) 2) Unmoderated 'chat' lists should be unmoderated, non-gatewayed groups :- chat in the newsgroup does not go back to the list. This is appropriate for non-technical lists sourced in the USA for instance, for cost reasons. If aliases are held at glasgow.cs, remember that we have no mechanism for recovering costs, and so are unwilling to generate traffic to the USA. 3) Unmoderated technical groups .... should be moderated newsgroups with aliases sending back into the mailing list. The person who runs 'make list' in the Aliases package [*] - to create the newsgroup and add to the mailing list - will decide which category the list falls into. Why? because otherwise we'll have the whole 'news.groups' scenario replicated, and I don't have time for that. At present all mail.* groups are in category (2), pending UKC's views. - -Jem. [*] consult info-server@gla.cs Request:sources Topic: aliases for an explanation of this cryptic comment. - -- ARPA:taylor@cs.glasgow.ac.uk \ Mail: J.A.Taylor, Computing Science, JANET: taylor@uk.ac.glasgow.cs \ Glasgow University, UseNet: mcvax!cs.glasgow.ac.uk!taylor \ GB-GLASGOW G12 8QQ ------- End of Forwarded Message