From ncr-sd!hp-sdd!hplabs!decwrl!purdue!spaf Wed Jun 1 11:04:42 PDT 1988 Original-from: Gene Spafford (spaf@cs.purdue.edu) & biep@cs.vu.nl (J. A. Durieux) [Most recent change: 18 May 1988 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu] A Usenet "backbone" site is one which exchanges every (non-local) news article it receives with at least two other backbone sites; or which is the main newsfeed for a particular geographical area (e.g., Australia) or special news gateway (e.g., inet) and exchanges news with at least one other backbone site. This exchange is done (theoretically) with minimum delay. Thus, any article submitted to a backbone site is supposed to propagate to all other backbone sites within a very short time period. (Under actual conditions, your mileage may vary.) To be labelled as part of the "backbone," a site must also: * be of sufficient capacity to handle the load of news; * be of sufficient capacity and connectivity to handle the load of mail generated by replies to news articles and as submissions to mailing lists and moderated groups sent through the backbone; * be running a recent version of the news software, and keep up-to-date with new releases and patches; * provide a stable news and mail relay service, preferably including a mailer understanding domains and domain-based addressing; * be staffed by experienced, responsible, capable staff who will maintain news and mail, and quickly respond to problem reports and requests for assistance; * wish to be advertised as a backbone site, thus taking part in discussions and debate as well as becoming a target for abuse from the net-at-large; * evidence some measure of financial and/or political stability so as to be able to remain as a backbone site for the indefinite future. Site admins wishing their site included in this posting should document the above points in mail to "backbone-request@rutgers.edu". Each backbone site normally feeds some number of well-connected secondary sites, most of which are not "leaf" (terminal) nodes. These secondary sites feed the news out to other distribution and leaf nodes, and so on. For optimal news distribution, each site should establish an "L" type link with a site closely connected to a backbone site. This will help ensure that any articles submitted from that site get propagated to the whole net with a minimum of delay. Sites should *not* request a news feed from a backbone site unless they are willing to feed at least five or six (or more) other, non-terminal sites. Note that some backbone links (viz., ALL--munnari,ncar--nbires, uunet--mcvax) do not carry all newsgroups, usually meaning "talk" and some "rec" groups, but sometimes also including "soc", "sci", "news", "misc", and "comp" newsgroups. The European component of Usenet receives a limited number of groups from outside Europe, as well as having a number of active "eunet" newsgroups, and exchanges all those articles via X.25 links. To send mail to the administrators of all the backbone sites, address your mail to "backbone@rutgers.edu". If you wish to send mail to the administrator of a particular site, consult the uucp map for the name and address of the appropriate individual(s). (In Europe uucp map entries are obtained through the national backbone's "netdir" service). /-------------------ohio-state vuwcomp / | : / /---------------\ | ncar.....................nbires ..munnari | / \ | | \ | / | / linus--husc6-+-ukma | \----ames---amdahl----uunet---attcan--utzoo | | / | | | | | | |\ \ : \ | | | (decvax) | | | | | | | \ : (mcvax) \ | | | | | | | | | (rutgers) | \ : : \ | | | | | | | | | | | \ : : | | | | | | | | | | ucsd--ucbvax : kddlab | | | \ philabs---cmcl2 | | | | | \ : | utgpu | \ \ | | gatech---purdue---decwrl--hplabs | | | \ \ | | / | / | | | \ \ | | / | / | | | mit-eddie-----------rutgers---mcnc---decvax---------------tektronix | | / \ / \ | | (ucsd) bellcore (linus) | | / \ | \ ulysses clyde-------------------------------watmath \ | \-----------------------------------att---alberta----ubc-cs --- = full link ... = restricted link This is the European backbone (mcvax feeds all of them): tut enea diku unido hafro tut -> Finland | \ | / | enea -> Sweden | \ | / | diku -> Denmark | \ | / | unido -> W. Germany | \ | / | inria -> France inria----+----------mcvax-------------+ mcvax -> Netherlands | / | \ | cernvax -> Switzerland | / | \ | ukc -> Great Britain | / | \ | prlb2 -> Belgium | / | \ | i2unix -> Italy tuvie ukc prlb2 i2unix cernvax tuvie -> Austria hafro -> Iceland Site Who They Are ---- ------------ alberta University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada amdahl Amdahl Corp, Sunnyvale CA ames NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA att AT&T "virtual machine", Columbus OH & Naperville, IL. attcan AT&T Canada, Toronto, Ontario, Canada bellcore Bellcore, Morristown, NJ cernvax CERN Labs, Geneva, Switzerland clyde AT&T, NJ somewhere cmcl2 NY University, New York City, NY decvax Digital Equipment Corp, Nashua, NH decwrl Digital Equipment Corp, Palo Alto, CA diku University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark enea ENEA DATA Svenska AB, Taeby, Sweden gatech Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA hafro Marine Research Institute, Reykjavik, Iceland hplabs HP Labs, Palo Alto, CA husc6 Harvard University, Cambridge, MA i2unix University of Genova, Genova, Italy inria INRIA, Rocquencourt, Le Chesnay, France kddlab KDD International T&T Co., Tokyo, Japan linus Mitre Corporation, Bedford, MA mcnc Microelectronics Center of NC, Research Triangle Park, NC mcvax Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, Amsterdam, Netherlands mit-eddie Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA munnari University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia nbires NBI Inc., Boulder CO ncar National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO ohio-state Ohio State University, Columbus, OH philabs Philips Laboratories, Briarcliff Manor, NY prlb2 Philips Laboratory, Brussels, Belgium purdue Purdue University, W. Lafayette, IN rutgers Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ tektronix Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR tut Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland tuvie TU Wein, EDV-Zentrum/PRA, Wein, Austria ubc-cs University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC ucbvax University of CA at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA ucsd University of CA at San Diego, La Jolla, CA ukc University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, UK ukma University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY ulysses AT&T Bell Labs, ??, NJ unido University of Dortmund, Dortmund, W. Germany utgpu University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada utzoo University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada uunet UUNET Communications, Inc., Fairfax, VA vuwcomp Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand watmath University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada -- Gene Spafford NSF/Purdue/U of Florida Software Engineering Research Center, Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-2004 Internet: spaf@cs.purdue.edu uucp: ...!{decwrl,gatech,ucbvax}!purdue!spaf