Newsgroups: vmsnet.announce.newusers,comp.os.vms,comp.org.decus,comp.sys.dec
Subject: Monthly info posting: What is VMSnet?
From: tp@mccall.com
Date: 10 Nov 92 09:35:59 GMT
Expires: 14 Dec 92 00:00:00 GMT
Organization: The McCall Pattern Co., Manhattan, KS, USA
Supersedes: <1992Oct1.093659.49@mccall.com>

[Last changed:  1-OCT-1992

This is a monthly informational posting to be posted to
vmsnet.announce.newusers, comp.os.vms, comp.org.decus, and comp.sys.dec.
Please send changes, corrections, or comments to <tp@mccall.com>.

[Changes since last posting: None ]

What is VMSnet?
---------------

VMSnet is a set of newsgroups, similar to usenet but conceptually separate
from it (i.e. the differences between VMSnet and usenet are political, not
technical, we use the same software). A current list of the newsgroups in
VMSnet may be found at the end of this article.

The "mission statement" for VMSnet is:

   VMSnet consists of the set of newsgroups named vmsnet.*. These newsgroups
   are for the discussion of topics of interest to users of VMS systems.
   This includes VMS specific issues, as well as any other issues of
   interest to the VMS community that have no other acceptable forum. This 
   includes discussion of topics or products that affect systems other than 
   VMS for which no other newsgroup exists. Discussion of platforms other than 
   VMS is very much welcome in groups that discuss topics or products that are
   not limited to VMS.


What is a newsgroup?
--------------------

A newsgroup is one discussion group within a "netnews" system. "netnews" is
the generic name for a set of programs that implement a distributed
conferencing system on thousands of systems world wide (A recent usenet
readership report estimates that there are 25974 sites on "the net", with
5,440,000 users, 1,156,000 of whom read news). The VMS implementation of
netnews is known as ANU News, and was written by Geoff Huston of the
Australian National University.

Netnews differs from mailing lists in that each node of the network
forwards all traffic to the next node, who forwards it on, ad infinitum.
This is known as a flood-fill algorithm. Contrast this to a mailing list,
in which all messages are sent to a central site, which must then send them
to all addresses on the list.

While the flood-fill algorithm is slower than a mailing list on the
internet, it is faster than one might think. The average delay for a
message to reach most of the net is under 1 day, and it is much faster than
that if the sender and receiver are close to an internet news site (which
is quite common). The flood-fill algorithm does, however, demand fewer
resources from any one site. Maintaining a large mailing list can put a
significant load on the host that does it, as well as its nearby network
connections.

Netnews also only stores one copy of an article, no matter how many people
read the newsgroup. The articles are maintained by the news system and
accessed with a news reader program, rather than being delivered to
individual mailboxes. Netnews is very similar to BBS systems, for those of
you familiar with those.

What newsgroups are available within netnews?
---------------------------------------------

Within the mass of data flowing through the net under the generic umbrella
of "netnews", there are "political" divisions. usenet is the largest part
of this, and includes well over 500 different newsgroups (i.e. discussion
topics). usenet is meant to be general, in that there is no limited set of
topics it will discuss. usenet has a set of rules and procedures that have
evolved over time, but there is no central authority in control of it.

VMSnet is much smaller, having been created more recently, and being
limited in scope to issues related to VMS. VMSnet is a project of the
VMSnet working group of the VAX SIG of the US chapter of DECUS, the same
group that distributes DECUS UUCP.

There are other political divisions within netnews (altnet, pubnet,
clarinet, etc.). Some of these cover specific topics (e.g. pubnet is for
public access unix systems), some are commercial services (e.g. clarinet is
a commercial online news-wire service), while some exist merely to avoid
being part of usenet (e.g. altnet is simply a set of groups not subject to
usenet rules). More information on all of these groups may be found in the
periodic postings on usenet in the group news.announce.newusers.

Newsgroup names are hierarchical, and the political divisions are reflected
in the first (top) part of the group name. Thus usenet groups start with
comp, misc, news, rec, sci, soc, or talk. Altnet groups start with alt,
Clarinet groups start with clari, etc., and VMSnet groups start with
vmsnet. Thus vmsnet.sources is a newsgroup within VMSnet.

Who can receive netnews?
------------------------

Any system that can receive mail can receive news, because netnews systems
can use mail to transport news articles from system to system. Much more
efficient transfer mechanisms exist, however. Internet sites can use UUCP
over TCP/IP, direct file transfer (i.e. some form of automated FTP), or
NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol). ANU News implements NNTP for several
popular TCP/IP packages. 

Sites that are not on the internet can use their existing mail facility, or
can implement another way of transfering data, UUCP for instance. For
example, BITNET sites could transfer news using BITNET mail, or by using
BITNET file transfer. Any site with a modem could install UUCP and transfer
news via dial-up phone lines.

Since ANU News uses DCL command procedures to feed the news into the
system, any scheme can be used. The only requirement is that the command
procedure be able to find the files that contain the news, so that they may
be input to the news software. Similarly, outgoing news is transferred by
issuing a command within a DCL command procedure to transfer the news. It
is not unreasonable to use any method of inter-machine data transfer that
can be driven by DCL commands.

UUCP has been provided for VMS by the VMSnet working group, chaired by Tom
Allebrandi. It allows any VMS site with a modem to send and receive netnews
and electronic mail via dialup phone lines (netnews traffic can be
compressed to reduce transfer time and thus phone charges). One must simply
find a nearby site to connect to (generally not difficult). DECUS UUCP is
available from the DECUS program library or a nearby DECUS LUG (local user
group) on the VAX/L&T SIG Tape for Spring 1990, or via FTP on the internet.
UUCP is generally the most convenient way for a VMS site that is not on a
wide-area network (like internet or BITNET) to transfer news and mail.

How do I transfer news via mail?
--------------------------------

This topic seems to generate the most questions, since everyone that gets
this posting at least has mail already running. In this context, mail is
treated as an underlying transport from news system to news system. The
news articles are not delivered to a user mailbox, but rather to a mailbox
read by the news software on the receiving system. Both systems must be
running news.

As mentioned above, the details of transfer are handled in DCL command
procedures (typically running as batch jobs). To send news via mail, an
appropriate command is issued to send the file containing news articles to
an agreed upon user name at the receiving site. To receive news via mail, a
batch job running as the user that receives the news simply extracts the
articles into a file. ANU News understands the format of this data, and is
able to ignore the mail headers and extract the news articles as they were
mailed (assuming that the data was not damaged in transit, which is the
major weakness of this scheme).

This scheme is not dependent upon the other site running VMS, as unix news
implementations can also ignore mail headers and extract news articles from
incoming mail messages. Similar capabilities would not be difficult to
arrange for other sites.

Where do I get the vmsnet newsgroups?
-------------------------------------

Once you have netnews running, getting the VMSnet newsgroups is generally
not difficult. They are carried by most major usenet news sites, including
uunet. Contact the system managers of news sites near you and see if any of
them can help you. Most regions also have newsgroups that are only seen
locally, and such a group would be a good place to ask if anyone in the
area is carrying the VMSnet newsgroups. 

If you have tried these alternatives and still can not find a site in your
local area that carries the VMSnet groups, you can send mail to Terry Poot
<tp@mccall.com>, who will attempt to assist you in finding a feed for the
groups. Alternatively, you can send mail to the VMSnet mailing list
<vmsnet@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu>, which is also gatewayed to the vmsnet.uucp
newsgroup and ask for help. 

In either case, be sure to state where you are geographically, and what
your constraints are. For instance, if you can only place local phone
calls, be sure to say just what areas are a local call for you. Be sure to
also state if you are connected to any networks other than just having a
uucp link. If you send your request to the mailing list (you don't have to
join the list to do so), be sure to mention that you don't receive the
mailing list so people will know to send you mail rather than responding to
the list.

If you do intend to run news, it is not usually neccessary to join the
VMSnet mailing list, as it is gatewayed to the newsgroup vmsnet.uucp, which
you will receive once you get the vmsnet newsgroups. The list itself is
primarily to support those users using uucp who do not intend to run news.
You can also join the list temporarily to learn more about VMSnet or uucp.

To join the VMSnet mailing list, send a request to:

     vmsnet-request@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu

Note that this is NOT a LISTSERV, it is read by a real human (Marc
Shannon), so do not send it LISTSERV commands like subscribe or
unsubscribe. Send a short note asking to be added/removed from the list,
and give your address or use a signature file (the stuff in the mail
headers isn't always reliable by the time your message reaches its
destination).

There are currently over 1950 sites (by one measure) worldwide that carry
the VMSnet groups, and this number is growing. Traffic is currently light,
but increasing slowly. By 2 other measures, the VMSnet groups are carried
by 45-50% of all usenet sites. (Apparently nobody knows how to measure the
size of usenet.)

Here is a list of all the groups currently in VMSnet:

vmsnet.admin		Administration of the VMSnet newsgroups.
vmsnet.announce		General announcements of interest to all. (Moderated)
vmsnet.announce.newusers	Orientation info for new users. (Moderated)
vmsnet.employment	Jobs sought/offered, workplace and employment related issues.
vmsnet.internals	VMS internals, MACRO-32, Bliss, etc., gatewayed to MACRO32 list.
vmsnet.mail.misc	Other electronic mail software.
vmsnet.mail.pmdf	PMDF email system, gatewayed to ipmdf mailing list.
vmsnet.mail.mx	MX email system from RPI, gatewayed to MX mailing list.
vmsnet.misc		General VMS topics not covered elsewhere.
vmsnet.networks.desktop.misc	Other desktop integration software.
vmsnet.networks.desktop.pathworks	DEC Pathworks desktop integration software.
vmsnet.networks.management.decmcc	DECmcc and related software.
vmsnet.networks.management.misc	Other network management solutions.
vmsnet.networks.misc	General networking topics not covered elsewhere.
vmsnet.networks.tcp-ip.cmu-tek  CMU-TEK TCP/IP package, gatewayed to cmu-tek-tcp+@andrew.cmu.edu.
vmsnet.networks.tcp-ip.misc	Other TCP/IP solutions for VMS.
vmsnet.networks.tcp-ip.multinet	TGV's Multinet TCP/IP, gatewayed to info-multinet.
vmsnet.networks.tcp-ip.ucx	DEC's VMS/Ultrix Connection (or TCP/IP services for VMS) product.
vmsnet.networks.tcp-ip.wintcp	The Wollongong Group's WIN-TCP TCP/IP software. 
vmsnet.pdp-11	PDP-11 hardware and software, gatewayed to info-pdp11.
vmsnet.sources		Source code postings ONLY. (Moderated)
vmsnet.sources.d	Discussion about or requests for sources.
vmsnet.sources.games	Recreational software postings.
vmsnet.sysmgt		VMS system management.
vmsnet.test		Test messages.
vmsnet.tpu              TPU language and applications, gatewayed to info-tpu.
vmsnet.uucp		DECUS uucp software, gatewayed to vmsnet mailing list.
vmsnet.vms-posix	Discussion about VMS POSIX.
---
Terry Poot <tp@mccall.com>                   The McCall Pattern Company
(uucp: ...!rutgers!ksuvax1!deimos!mccall!tp) 615 McCall Road
(800)255-2762, in KS (913)776-4041           Manhattan, KS 66502, USA