HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: dean@pico.qpsx.oz.au (Dean Economou)
Newsgroups: aus.aarnet
Subject: Re: FASTPAC, AUSPAC, WHAT ARE THEY?
Date: 6 Oct 92 02:51:45 GMT
Organization: QPSX Communications LTD, Perth, Western Australia.
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4

jane.tsai@f600.n713.z3.fido.zeta.org.au (Jane Tsai) writes:
: 
: I've been reading most of the messages about Fastpac and am really confused.
: What exactly is Fastpac? What is Austpac? Are they dialup services? Can the

FASTPAC is a high speed communications service offered by AOTC.  It is
currently restricted to packet switching with 2Mbit/sec and 10Mbit/sec
interfaces.  One of its target uses is linking of LANs, and so the
10Mbit/sec inteface supports Ethernet directly.  Token ring is also
supported.  The 2 Mbit/sec interface is an exposed packet interface for
carrying 802.6 IMPDUs, as defined in the IEEE 802.6 DQDB standard, and
also as used in the US SMDS service.

For more information, look in the Communications section of this
Monday's "Australian". 

: general public use it or is it for corporations and universities and such?
: I'm looking into dialup services that have access to telnet and usenet news

FASTPAC is not currently a dial-up service.  For what you describe it
sounds as though you're best off contacting the nearest University
computer centre and asking for their help.

: and Internet functions, and Fastpac and Austpac "sound" like something I
: might be looking for (Canada has a dialup service called Datapac).

Austpac is AOTC's X.25 network and this does have dial-up interfaces.  I
believe the Canadian Datapac is the equivalent.  The existing X.25
implementations don't offer interfaces faster than 64kbps (someone
correct me if I'm wrong).

: 
: Even if it isn't what I'm looking for, I'd really like to know what they are
: so that I can at least follow the conversations about them!
: 
: Thanks in advance.
: 
: Jane Tsai
: Reply to s3004638@mackay.mpce.mq.edu.au
:

No worries,
Dean
(dean@qpsx.zo.au)
 
: 
: --- TMail v1.30.5
:  * Origin: Prophet BBS - Western Sydney, Australia (3:713/600)
Newsgroups: aus.aarnet
From: raeram@kittyhawk.aero.rmit.OZ.AU (Richard A. Muirden)
Newsgroups: aus.aarnet,aus.netstatus
Subject: archie.au and network saturation - overseas users?
Date: 2 Oct 92 08:54:18 GMT
Organization: RMIT Computer Centre
NNTP-Posting-Host: kittyhawk.aero.rmit.oz.au

I just happened to finger at archie, and was surprised to
see this:


[archie.au] 
Login       Name              TTY Idle    When    Where
kre      Robert Elz            p0 4:48 Sun 09:35  mundamutti.cs.mu    
archie   AARNet Archie Server  p1  10d Tue 02:06  umrvma.umr.edu      
archie   AARNet Archie Server  p2    1 Fri 18:48  frey.newcastle.e    
archie   AARNet Archie Server  p4  19: Thu 23:35  cobalt.spectrum.    
archie   AARNet Archie Server  p6      Fri 18:37  frcpn11.in2p3.fr    
archie   AARNet Archie Server  p7    9 Fri 18:35  elect1.weizmann.    

1 user from the US
1 user from france
1 user from israel
2 users (archie, not including kre) from australia.

five minutes before I posted this, there was also a user from the
uk on.

The point is, more foreigners seem to be using archie than aussies.
Sure this is a moment in time, and this might not be as common as
it appears.

This isn't even the ftp connections - I wonder what THAT would
look like.

People have been talking about the net saturation, yet I see non
australians using archie when there would be far closer servers
around the world. 

This is using up the network links to the detriment of all (them
and us). 

Why don't the archie admins place a ban on non australian connections
in (using something like tcpd). Unless this is a problem with AARNet,
it might help in at least a little way (if only to lower the load
on archie? :) ).

Just a thought, late on a friday...

-richard

--
Richard Muirden, System Administator, RMIT.Aero. Engineering.. Office: 10.12.25
raeram@kittyhawk.aero.rmit.OZ.AU, s892024@minyos.xx.rmit.OZ.AU 'phone: 660-3142
ram@lionet.wesley.OZ.AU, ram@coombs.anu.edu.au - in case you don't like RMIT! :)
----------------- Fanatic of Shostakovich and "Star Trek" ---------------------
From: jhonan@kralizec.zeta.org.au (Jamie Honan)
Newsgroups: aus.aarnet
Subject: Re: Use TV for sending UseNet News?
Date: 30 Sep 92 07:49:08 GMT
Organization: Kralizec Dialup Unix Sydney: +61-2-837-1183 V.32


> > Someone from the ABC was telling me they have a service called
> > "DataCast". This transmits data during the vertical blanking
> > interval on TV transmissions.

>The technique is in the same arena as 'teletext' but the actual data rate is
>extremely slow in comparison with existing AARnet links. Due to the redundancy
>required, the transmission of around 1000 pages of large-font (i.e. low
>content) textual information is around 5 minutes.


I now have a little more information than previously. The 'DataCasting' is
indeed done in the vertical blanking interval, unlike Teletext.

The Teletext system could be used to transmit data, and I believe the data
rates are much higher than Michael (g'day again) intimates. My sources
indicate this would be at least 9600 bps.

Up to 16 scan lines can be used for Teletext (7 to 22). These have a duration
of 64uS, but only an effective duration of approx 50uS. The bandwidth is 5 MHz.
By my reckoning the theoretical max is 25 (times a second) * 50 (uS) * 5 MHz *
16 (lines) = 100K bps.

Now I wouldn't pretend that anything like this is achieved, but it does
indicate that 9600 bps should be possible.

The use of Teletext scan lines rather than the vertical blanking interval
is (IMHO) to be preferred because of low cost, consumer oriented decoder
circuits.

The widespread availability of such decoders is crucial to a public data
transmission service.

In many ways, if the desirability of such a service can be demonstrated, 
we could forget about the technical details of how it might be achieved.

What are the benefits of transmitting data? 

In many ways Usenet is only a small portion of data that would be of public
interest. I would find it hard to imagine a National Broadcaster relaying
unmoderated Usenet. Think, for a moment, of such matters as libel, offensive
language etc. 

It is also important to realise that such a service would augment but not
replace the current Usenet system. We all get the news! What I am concerned
about is how people NOT connected can get at least highlights, and can
be introduced to new ideas that they have no other convenient access.

If we think about public data in general, imagine a 'programme' of transmitted
data like this

10:00 ABC news(local)
10:02 ABC news (international)
10:04 Flemington Market prices
10:06 Weather in detail
10:08 weather maps
10:10 Schools 
10:16 Usenet highlights
10:18 Simtel top ten

Such a programme should have broad public appeal.

If the decoder price was low enough, if the political will was there to
fund such a service ....

Think Public Data!
From: chris@suite.sw.oz.au (Chris Maltby)
Newsgroups: su.net,su.general,aus.aarnet
Subject: Re: Sydney University Network Downtime
Date: 5 Oct 92 23:33:50 GMT
Distribution: aus
Organization: Softway Pty Ltd

In <terrys.718009592@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU> rossc@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Ross Cartlidge) writes:

>The Head-End will be down for two hours - from 5pm ->7pm on Friday
>It will be down again around midday on Monday when
>we switch back to normal power.

I understand that the nomenclature here is based on the nautical use of
the word "head"...
-- 
Chris Maltby - Softway Pty Ltd		Internet: chris@softway.sw.oz.au

PHONE:	+61-2-698-2322	"I'm waiting for X-Windows to become just that;
FAX:	+61-2-699-9174	 Ex-Windows" - A McGrath.
From: jane.tsai@f600.n713.z3.fido.zeta.org.au (Jane Tsai)
Newsgroups: aus.aarnet
Subject: FASTPAC, AUSPAC, WHAT ARE THEY?
Date: 30 Sep 92 09:00:17 GMT
Organization: Fidonet. Gate admin is fido@socs.uts.edu.au


I've been reading most of the messages about Fastpac and am really confused.
What exactly is Fastpac? What is Austpac? Are they dialup services? Can the
general public use it or is it for corporations and universities and such?
I'm looking into dialup services that have access to telnet and usenet news
and Internet functions, and Fastpac and Austpac "sound" like something I
might be looking for (Canada has a dialup service called Datapac).

Even if it isn't what I'm looking for, I'd really like to know what they are
so that I can at least follow the conversations about them!

Thanks in advance.

Jane Tsai
Reply to s3004638@mackay.mpce.mq.edu.au


--- TMail v1.30.5
 * Origin: Prophet BBS - Western Sydney, Australia (3:713/600)
From: ip_boss@degsyd.syd.deg.csiro.au (Jack Churchill)
Newsgroups: aus.aarnet
Subject: Re: FASTPAC and AARNET
Date: 25 Sep 92 22:12:52 +1000
Organization: CSIRO, Exploration Geoscience

In article <miw.717214091@cc.uq.oz.au>, miw@cc.uq.oz.au (Mark I. Williams) writes:
> Not a problem on any of these scales. However, the combination of an
> Ethernet interface and the disassembly/reassembly time make end-end
> delay and delay jitter too large for some real-time video applications.
> Perhaps this is not so surprising when you look at what is happening!
> However, for me it is disappointing. What it means is that FASTPAC is
> still basically a data-only service, as it performs no better than two
> ciscos at the ends of a megalink.

Is it about here we should start planning for B-ISDN/ATM to provide reliable
mult-media services.  Definitive standards for B-ISDN/ATM are yet to be set but
by the sounds of people I've talked to in the commercial networking world, ATM
style networking has a very promising future which will effectively merge WAN
and LAN.  Is Optus looking at it and should we be encouraging it?
-- 
  Jack N. Churchill                         | J.Churchill@syd.deg.csiro.au
  CSIRO  Division of Exploration Geoscience | churchill@decus.com.au
  PO Box 136  North Ryde  NSW  2113         | Phone:  +61 2 887 8884
  Australia                                 | Fax:    +61 2 887 8909
** Unless otherwise specified, the opinions expressed here are my own. **
From: u734120@bruny.cc.utas.edu.au (John Lamp)
Subject: Re: better use of `prog' on archie ...
Keywords: paging mail archie prog search
Organization: University of Tasmania, Australia.
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 21:03:50 GMT

cameron@spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au (Cameron Simpson) writes:

>[Followups to aus.aarnet.]

>johnd@cortex.physiol.su.oz.au (John Dodson) writes:
>| I would not mind betting that the following is what the majority of archie
>| users do... (despite there being better tools available)
>| 
>| $ archie
>[...]
>| archie> prog whatever
>| 
>| [here archie grinds away then outputs ~30 pages of ftp sites & files]
>| [the user only sees the last few on screen & ftp's to one of those]

>and so forth. I _don't_ take the last few screens; I almost always use `mail'
>to send off the complete query so I can peruse it easily. A pger isn't what I
>want; I want a terse way to do the query.

Yes, I tend to do archie searches by sending mail to archie@archie.au and
then using the search command in my editor to examine the output.  What I
would like though is a way of restricting the sites searched eg a command
along the lines of 

	set sites .au

which would restrict the prog results to sites with a .au in their address.

Perhaps the greater ease of using mail interrogation of archie is why so
few Australian users are ever seen logged on to archie - maybe OS users
either don't know about this facility or are seen during our day (their
night for US users) when they see the load is low.

Timezone randomness for never.

This message comes to you from Tassy, where we are an hour ahead (but
probably ten years behind!)

Just thought I would get the latter in before the mainlanders did! ;-)

Cheers
John


--
   _--_|\             John Lamp, originating in Hobart, Tasmania
  /      \                 Phone: 002 23 1366 - Fax: 002 34 5685
  \_.--._/                   email: u734120@bruny.cc.utas.edu.au
        v <-----------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: aus.aarnet
From: kre@cs.mu.oz.au (Robert Elz)
Newsgroups: su.net,aus.aarnet
Subject: Re: Metro addressing problems
Date: 27 Sep 92 20:50:55 GMT
Distribution: aus
Organization: Computer Science, University of Melbourne, Australia

In <rossc.717550599@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU> rossc@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Ross Cartlidge) writes:

| Does anyone know a better way of fixing this up -or
| avoiding this in the future?

The idea way is not to change addresses of nameservers, or at least
not until a much much better version of bind comes along.   (You can
delete something as a nameserver, wait, change its address, then make
it a nameserver again, as long as you make sure to totally delete it,
and probably not even run bind in the interim, and take all the
appropriate steps to make sure all secondaries, etc, are updated).

But, more practically perhaps, you really need to have the nameserver
which is having the address expunged not be a secondary for anything
at all, so its not likely to get corrupted, then change the SOA of all
of its zone files frequently (set the refresh period low, and change
the SOA's every refresh period or so).  Keep checking to make sure
your server isn't corrupted, restart it with a change of all SOA's if
its found to have the old address back again somehow.

Check all secondary servers of yours, including unofficial ones,
and all secondaries of any domains that you're also a secondary of
probably, once they're all clear of the old address, and all the servers
you are normally a secondary of are also clear, then wait a bit longer,
and check again, if everything is still clear, you can probably go
back to normal.

Things will clear out quicker if you set the TTL on the old address way
down (perhaps even 0) for a couple of refresh periods before it is
deleted (with an SOA increment of course).

kre
From: ggast@peg.pegasus.oz.au
Newsgroups: aus.aarnet
Subject: Re: Connections for High Schools?
Date: 28 Sep 92 14:51:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #R:thecure.717083555@munagin:975346214:peg:246600049:000:480
Nf-From: peg.UUCP!ggast    Sep 28 09:51:00 1992



High schools and other educational users on Pegasus Networks
can have access to AARNet/Internet via our network. There are
no extra costs involved. Pegasus is now a substantial communications
provider in Australia. Education, landcare and local government
are some of the fields Pegasus is involved in. For further
information please ring Pegasus Networks 07 257 1111, fax 07 257 1087
or write to Pegasus Networks, PO Box 284, Broadway 4006

Regards,

Gert Gast
Pegasus Networks
Newsgroups: aus.aarnet
From: tomw@ccadfa.cc.adfa.oz.au (Tom Worthington)
Subject: Re: Use TV for sending UseNet News?
Organization: Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra, Australia
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 23:52:23 GMT

The ABC TV Datacast people have sent me details of their service. It
is similar to Teletext in the method of transmission. It does allow
sending binary data. I have asked them for a copy of the details
on disk so I can post a summary here.

The question of what rules would cover the use of the TV signal to
transmit data is an interesting one. I suggest the answer would
depend on who could receive the information, not on the technology used.

I raised some of the problems with regulating in this area in a submission
to the Pay TV Senate enquiry a few weeks ago.

Newspapers, private letters, telephone calls, radio and TV all have 
different regulations covering what you can say. A service transmitting
data using a TV signal could have aspects of all of these forms of
communication.

Tom Worthington
Chairman ACS Canberra
Newsgroups: aus.aarnet
From: act@softserver.canberra.edu.au (Cyclops)
Subject: Re: better use of `prog' on archie ...
Keywords: paging mail archie prog search
Organization: University of Canberra
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 92 22:39:50 GMT

johnd@cortex.physiol.su.oz.au (John Dodson) writes:
| I would not mind betting that the following is what the majority of archie
| users do... (despite there being better tools available)
| 
| $ archie
[...]
| archie> prog whatever
| 
| [here archie grinds away then outputs ~30 pages of ftp sites & files]
| [the user only sees the last few on screen & ftp's to one of those]

Please use help and you will find that if you want interactive paged output
then you can set system parameters: the one you want is "set pager" and then
the archie output gets fed through a "more" like pager.

Alternately, and I use it all the time, try mailing archie as follows:

mail archie@archie.au

and then, subject not required, include in the body of your mail:

prog whatever

and then send your mail and in a little while archie will mail you the
results of the search.  BTW a liitle while ago archie had a problem but
hopefully this has now been fixed.  Also you can include in the body of
your mail any archie commands so that you can do anything "in batch" that
you could have done interactively. 

Seriously do have a look at the help screens on archie and you will find
archie moderately sophisticated.

-- 
Renrut Werdna			Probable-Possible, my black hen,
				She lays eggs in the Relative When.
				She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
act@ss.canberra.edu.au		Because she's unable to postulate how
Xref: sparky aus.aarnet:927 aus.netstatus:187
From: C.Chaundy@its.unimelb.EDU.AU
Newsgroups: aus.aarnet,aus.netstatus
Subject: University of Melbourne network problems
Date: 27 Sep 92 23:59:14 GMT
Organization: The University of Melbourne

The University of Melbourne Campus Network was off the air from Sunday evening
to about 9:30am (EST) Monday 28 September 1992 due to a multicast storm.  This
has been fixed by disabling all bridging (temporarily).  Note that this would
have also affected access to the CSIRO Cray supercomputer.

Apologies to anyone inconvenienced.
-- 
Chris Chaundy (Technical Manager, Networks)

Information Technology Services, Thomas Cherry Building,
The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3052 Australia
Phone:    +61 3 344 7045                Fax:   +61 3 347 4803
Internet: C.Chaundy@its.unimelb.EDU.AU 	(X.121 505233430003)
From: jhonan@kralizec.zeta.org.au (Jamie Honan)
Newsgroups: aus.aarnet
Subject: Re: Use TV for sending UseNet News?
Date: 30 Sep 92 07:29:05 GMT
Organization: Kralizec Dialup Unix Sydney: +61-2-837-1183 V.32

tomw@ccadfa.cc.adfa.oz.au (Tom Worthington) writes:

>Someone from the ABC was telling me they have a service called
>"DataCast". This transmits data during the vertical blanking 
>interval on TV transmissions. Its used for stock exchange information
>and the like. However there appears to be a lot of spare capacity.
>Perhaps it could be used to transmit the UseNet news around 
>Australia? Just a thought.

>Tom Worthington
>tomw@adfa.oz.au

I believe the mechanism is the same as used for Teletext and the deaf
sub titles.

It should be entirely possible to transmit and decode data using this
mechanism. The data rates are quite high (I don't have the exact figures
on hand )

It is 'merely' a matter of convincing a National Broadcaster (E.g. SBS, ABC)
to reserve some of this bandwidth (e.g. pages 700 - 800 of the Teletext system)
for public data, and of some enterprising types to make the suitable decoders.

The decoders would consist of a T.V. tuner sub-system coupled with Teletext
decoder chips such as the Phillips series SAA5240, SAB3035. A couple of
hundred dollars would give a large margin on low volumes easily.

Any other opinions?

Jamie Honan

Newsgroups: su.net,su.general,aus.aarnet
From: rossc@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Ross Cartlidge)
Subject: Re: Sydney University Network Downtime
Organization: Sydney University Computing Service, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Distribution: aus
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 07:06:32 GMT

rossc@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Ross Cartlidge) writes:

>I wrote:

>>The network backbone of the University of Sydney
>>will be down from 6pm Friday, October the 2nd, until
>>the next Tuesday morning.

>>It is due to upgrade of the main electrical switchboard
>>in the Madsen building, where the Head-End of the Broadband
>>network is located.

>We have arranged for an external power supply for the
>long weekend.
>Therefore the network will be only down for a short period
>on the Friday night when we switch supplies.

The Head-End will be down for two hours - from 5pm ->7pm on Friday
It will be down again around midday on Monday when
we switch back to normal power.

rossc
-- 
________________________________________________________________________
Ross Rodney Cartlidge			    |   rossc@ucc.su.oz.au
Information Services, H08		    |   Phone:     +61 2 6923491
University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia   |   FAX:       +61 2 6606557
From: ccrob@uqvax.cc.uq.oz.au
Subject: Re: NSWRL Grand Final (was: GO THE DRAGONS!)
Organization: The Prentice Centre, Uni of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 02:42:35 GMT

In article <10511@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au>, brendan@cs.uq.oz.au (Brendan Mahony) writes:
> In <1992Sep30.174140.1@uqvax.cc.uq.oz.au> ccrob@uqvax.cc.uq.oz.au writes:
> 
>>I don't agree Saints embarassed themselves.
> 
> Any team that resorts to throwing about 30 blind flick passes in one set                           
> of six tackles is embarassing itself.

(Slight exaggeration here).

If the Broncos do it and score a try, it's talent - if Saints do it and stuff
up, then they're a bunch of losers? What about the number of times the Broncos
pass the ball in their own quarter while running it back? The odd mistake tends
to be overlooked, simply because they have generally done it well this year.

Given the circumstances, what did Saints have to lose? They're down on the
scoreboard. It was obvious from the first 5 minutes of the game that defence
alone would not win the match no matter how good it was (thankfully). The 
Broncos were hot in attack, with their defence holding well, and Saints were 
desperate. As I said in my earlier posting, once fatigue set in, Saints
couldn't match the opposition - no shame in that.

Saints well well beaten by a better side. But 6-4 at the break is embarassment?
I think not.

--
Rob.
From: c9106311@wombat.newcastle.edu.au
Subject: Re: Australian Open Tennis Tournament
Organization: Uni of Newcastle, Australia
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 05:15:59 GMT

>In other words, I am planning to be in Melbourne for more than a few days.  
>My number one priority (for my time in Melbourne) is to get to the  
>tournament for 3 or 4 days, but I would like to explore the city a bit as  
>well.

>Any advice will be greatly appreciated.  Please reply via e-mail directly  
>to me.
 ** some really god advice is just don't go to melbourne unless it is really 
necessary.  No Seriously I don't live there, but if you get here about late 
january try and get along to the Cricket.  Inthink it's better than baseball 
and a little more exciting than tennis( no bugger it a lot more exciting).  
Just make sure you get along to a match between Australia and he West Indies 
they're the best.  Sorry I'm not much help about Melbourne though.  Enjoy 
our country as much as you like we need the money
 ""
 00
 \/
Newsgroups: aus.sport
From: u9124322@cs.uow.edu.au (Adam Peter Millard)
Subject: St. George were pathetic
Summary: St. G SUX
Keywords: none
Organization: Dept of Computer Science, Wollongong University, Australia
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 05:49:18 GMT

That effort by St. George in the NSWRL Grand final was the worst display
from a grand final team that I have ever seen. The only St. George player
that played any good at all was Scott Gourley.
The Steelers should have been the ones in the Grand Final as they were the
only team in the comp that had any chance of beating Brisbane (besides Parra,
that is :) ). At least Illawarra wouldn't have given up after Brisbane 
scored 2 tries!!!!

Also, the selectors for the world cup side must be the biggest bunch of
dickheads ever seen!! Why was Rod Wishart left out??!!! He is a much better
winger and player than either of Carne or Hancock, let alone Goden or Brasher.
Although, Brasher does deserve his chance.
Also, what the hell is Gourley doing out of the squad. He has been one of
the best forwards on the comp this year.


---------------------------------
+	Death to St. George	+
---------------------------------