From: joanne@hanauma.jpl.nasa.gov (Joanne G. Shimada)
Subject: Re: The Best of SIGGRAPH 1992
Organization: SAR Systems Development and Processing, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 08:30:35 GMT

In article <tromo.713569777@keckiris> tromo@rice.edu (Tod Romo) writes:
>foo@netcom.com (Mark Hall) writes:
>
>>   Part of the crowding problem came from people abusing the telnet 
>>privileges. There were some people reading News at the machines. Telnet 
>>was disabled on most machines after that.
>
>What I saw more often than not was
>people using telnet at peak hours for 15 or more minutes a session,
>seemingly oblivious to the huge queues behind them.  Some sort of timing
>system to limit telnet sessions to say 5 minutes during peak times 
>might have helped.  Just allocate enough time to telnet to a host, read
>mail and post a few messages, then logout.

Let me first say that having the electronic message center -- or more
precisely, Internet access -- was a great idea.  As others have pointed
out, though, this first-time implementation had some problems.

I liked the terminal room at the Winter '92 USENIX conference in San
Francisco.  They had between 15 and 20 X-terminals with Internet access
set up in one of the conference hotel's meeting rooms.  Six of the terminals
were 5-minute "express" stations; the others could be used for 10 minutes
if anyone was in line and indefinitely if not.  There was always at least
one person on duty at all times to assist users and enforce the time limits.
The room was open from early morning until after midnight each day of the
conference except the last.  E-mail sent directly to the conference wasn't
handled by the X-terminals but was instead printed and posted on a bulletin
board located in a separate area.  Overall, the terminal room worked well;
the network was slow but didn't experience too many problems.  Most people
respected the time limits and there were often no lines during the evening
hours.

The important difference between the USENIX and the SIGGRAPH terminal rooms
was the people working in the USENIX room.  Not only did they make sure the
lines moved, but they had the know-how to correct the occasional network or
terminal glitch.  In contrast, when the SIGGRAPH network crashed that Tuesday
morning, it took almost half an hour to find someone to reboot the mailserver
and the individual client stations.  I'm sure that I wasn't the only one
tempted to reboot the machine on the central desk, except that a few of the
clients were somehow still usable.  And no, the people in the blue suits
didn't know what to do.  (BTW, I think that telnet access was restricted after
this crash because of problems with NFS, not as a punitive measure.)  My only
comment about the electronic messaging (which I didn't use) is that telnet
access was much more in demand -- I remember seeing 2-3 unused "message"
stations in L-3 while there was a long line for the "telnet" stations.

Someone else mentioned the fact that the SIGGRAPH terminal room closed at
6 PM most days.  I can see how it would have been difficult to justify
doing otherwise, especially given McCormick Place's remote location.  The
situation at USENIX was different -- the conference was centrally located
at the Hilton in downtown SF, close to many other hotels and BART.  Perhaps
next year's electronic message center could be located in one of the
conference hotels, staffed with student volunteers?

Joanne Shimada
-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joanne G. Shimada            (joanne@malibu.jpl.nasa.gov; SPAN:  kahuna::joanne)
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, M/S 300-235, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109
These are my opinions, not JPL's.                                      Go BEARS!