Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!purdue!spaf
From: s...@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford)
Newsgroups: news.misc,news.config
Subject: The USENET Backbone (Updated: 18 May 1988)
Message-ID: <4245@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Date: 1 Jun 88 06:28:44 GMT
Expires: 11 Jul 88 06:28:43 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
Lines: 154
Supersedes: <4...@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Original-from: Gene Spafford (s...@cs.purdue.edu) & b...@cs.vu.nl (J. A. Durieux)
[Most recent change: 18 May 1988 by s...@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-requ...@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 "backb...@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: s...@cs.purdue.edu uucp: ...!{decwrl,gatech,ucbvax}!purdue!spaf
|