Text 11262, 78 rader
Skriven 2005-07-27 01:34:26 av Matt Bedynek (1:106/1)
  Kommentar till text 11252 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
Ärende: Fidonews Echo Rules
===========================
Hello Michiel.

26 Jul 05 09:30, you wrote to me:

 >> I do not beleive that will solve anything at all.

 MvdV> Well, you have to keep in mind that because we have an echopol, EC's
 MvdV> actually have some authority. Or had, when out of area feeds were
 MvdV> prohobitively expensive. They had the authority to order link cuts.

First of all, like the rest of Fidonet these days, your ECs do not operate
exactly how ECHOPOL defines them to operate.  Much like policy is used in this
zone, only parts that are convenient are used.  That does not mean the practice
is bad but that perhaps the document needs revision to define current practice.

 MvdV> Yes, that is a problem. Over here the fully connected polygon was
 MvdV> never very popular. Maybe for the reason you point out. The most
 MvdV> complex I ever saw in my own region was a simple triangle.

My opinion is that it is simply not needed.  Everybody wants to be a "big mail
hub" but not everyone is cut out for the job.  Broadband made becoming a mail
distributor too easy.  Not that I have a problem with this but there is more to
hubbing mail than setting up a tosser and linking other nodes.  When you start
forwarding mail, you are responsible for what ever your system injects into the
stream.  And, most of the time you are alone in isolating problems and
soliciting cooperation to get them fixed.  When someone that hubs fails to do
their job they are passing the buck to their peers.  That is the current state.

Topology grows faster than the network has a need for.

Fidonet is not so mission critical that large meshing is needed.

Pre-2K, there was the SWP backbone, 396/1, 270/101, and 12/12.  They handled
the traffic load more than adequate.  A load, I might add, that is greater than
anything that exists today (minus the R50 BB).

Souvestre could be a bitch about how other people did things, but he did a good
job of keeping mail distribution in this zone clean because he would embarass
the hell out of someone when they failed to fix or created problems.

Despite the freedom that broadband has given people.  A coordinated structure
(with some technical sanity) runs much better.  Fidonet, as it exists, is a
free-for-all.  That is why it needed routing charts (which you were lucky to
have updated - if at all).

I just remember the technical ceiling of the average hub 10 yrs ago being much
higher than it is today.  It was cool to see a routed netmail reach the
destination in a timely manner even going through a dozen hops!  Today, you are
lucky to receive routed netmail even if it has to cross only a few.

Not only that, the network was so much larger.  I'd hate to see the state of
things in this zone today if the same number of nodes were present.  Well, I'd
like to see the nodes but not the mail problems.  :-)

 MvdV> Yep. And maybe that is why we normally saw just star like distribution
 MvdV> here. Complex fully connected polygons are difficult to coordinate.

That is why we have the current configuration.  Some wanted a five system mesh
but I was strongly against it.  Instead, I felt satellite meshes composing of
no more than three systems was best.  And, there were already mesh clouds
operating so why not capitalize on that!

 MvdV> Also note that over here emphasis was always more on dupe prevention
 MvdV> rather than dupe detection. In a star like configuration it is fairly
 MvdV> easy to see what link shoud be cut to break the dupe loop and as I
 MvdV> said, EC's had the authority to order kink cuts.

 MvdV> It worked fairly well.

You cannot prevent what you cannot control.


Matt

e-mail: matt [at] thunderdome.us | icq: 16568532 | yahoo: mbedynek

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