free collaborative tools for low BW and losy connections

Tue Mar 31 16:06:40 UTC 2020

Joe Greco wrote on 31/03/2020 15:55:
> There's a strange disconnect here.  The concept behind Usenet is to have
> a distributed messaging platform.  It isn't clear how this would work
> without ... well, distribution.  The choice is between flood fill and
> perhaps something a little smarter, for which options were proposed and
> designed and never really caught on.
> 
> Without the distribution mechanism (flooding), you don't have Usenet,
> you have something else entirely.

Exactly. And there's no disconnect: usenet doesn't scale because each 
object is copied to all core nodes rather than referenced, or 
copied-as-needed, or other.  This design of distributed messaging 
platform will eventually break as it grows.  It's ok to acknowledge this 
explicitly: message buses are useful, but they have their limits.

> Kinda like how there's a problem with the technology of the Internet
> because if I wanna be a massive network or a tier 1 or whatever, I
> gotta have a massive investment in routers and 100G circuits and all
> that?  Why can't we just build an Internet out of 10 megabit ethernet
> and T1's?  Isn't this just another example of your "problem with the
> technology at the design level?"

No, not even slightly.  Is an NSP expected to carry all traffic for the 
entire DFZ?  Because that's your proposed analogue here.

> Usage grows.  I used to run Usenet on a 24MB Sun 3/60 with a pile of
> disks and Telebits.  Now I'm blowing gigabits through massive machines.
> This isn't a poorly designed technology.  It's scaled well past what
> anyone would have expected.

yeah, I don't miss those days.  I ran news on a decsystem 5100 with a 
couple of megs of RAM and a single disk. My desktop was a sun 3/60.  Not 
pretty, but at least it could fit 4 xterms on-screen.  In that sense, it 
was almost as functional as my ragingly fast desktop is these days.

Nick