Newsgroups: vmsnet.announce.newusers,comp.os.vms
Subject: Monthly info posting: VMSnet on Bitnet
From: tp@mccall.com
Date: 7 Jan 93 13:12:07 GMT
Expires: 14 Feb 93 00:00:00 GMT
Organization: The McCall Pattern Co., Manhattan, KS, USA
Supersedes: <1992Dec2.085226.69@mccall.com>

[Last changed: 1-AUG-1990]

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

[Changes since last posting: None.]

I know very little about Bitnet, but I get lots of questions. I'm posting
my best guesses in case it might be helpful, and also to solicit
corrections, comments, and more information. It is assumed that you have
read the posting entitled: "Monthly info posting: What is VMSnet?"

How do I get VMSnet if my only network link is Bitnet?
------------------------------------------------------

There are three things you have to do.

1) Get and install ANU News. 

2) Find a news feed. This seems to be the hard part for bitnet sites. The 
best way would be to find a nearby bitnet site that runs news. This will 
probably be a site on both bitnet and internet, or a bitnet site that also
runs uucp. I've been lead to believe that there are a lot of these
nowadays. You certainly want the closest site to you in terms of bitnet
topology. Maybe you could just ask your direct links, and then one level
out, etc until you find one.

3) Once you have found a news feed, you need to set up ANU News to exchange
news with him via either bitnet mail or send/file commands. Either is
rather easy to arrange. I believe the ANU News documentation covers this
relatively well. To set it up using send/file commands, simply copy the
DECnet copy code with appropriate changes.

This isn't something that has been done a lot, as far as I know, but there
also isn't any technical reason it can't be done. The problems you will run
into are bandwidth (solved by only exchanging the newsgroups you really
want, if you don't have the bandwidth to exchange them all), and mailers
messing up messages (or limiting their size). I don't know what you can do
about that except to find a path that doesn't have the problem, or work
with neighboring sites to resolve the problem.

Note that a mail link does not have to be with a direct neighbor, it can be 
anyone reachable by mail. If you have a nearby bitnet/internet gateway
site, even if he doesn't run news, you could set up a mail link with any
internet site through that gateway.

VMSnet is not currently large, but it can be bursty when large sources are 
posted. Be SURE that your links can stand it and the sites the traffic
passes through don't object (convince them how great news is and get them
hooked up! :-). If you get more than just VMSnet (i.e. usenet), traffic can
go way up. I believe recent statistics say that ALL of the netnews around
(including 77 or so separate hierarchies (where vmsnet is just one of
those) is about 16 MB per day.
--
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
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