From: sterling@netcom.com
Subject: Re: Network Use
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 92 01:45:41 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Keywords: NSFNET, network, traceroute

In article <c+cHmkpq6@cs.psu.edu> stine@orodruin.endor.cs.psu.edu (Jeffrey L Stine) writes:
>In article <a#yjw6j.sterling@netcom.com> sterling@netcom.com writes:
>>In a free and open environment, one should not restrict someone elses ability
>      ^^^^
>	 |_____ where did you get the idea that network access is free?
> somewhere along the line someone is paying for your ability to use it.
> If you want to argue that the internet is a public resource and as such
> _should_ be free then please do so.

Almost as soon as I posted this, I wondered if someone would read that the
wrong way.  There are many definitions of 'free' and I was not referring to
the cost, but rather that the environment should be unrestricted and unburdened
in such ways, that is, an open environment to do as you please so long as it's
not hurting anyone else.  In fact, to charge that I think network access is 
free is ludicruous, in light of the fact that I currently *pay* for my account.

>I don't think Alex was trying to make it his business whether you use
>traceroute or trying to impose his will on others. If anything you are
>trying to insinuate yourself as a public spokesperson to denounce his opinion.
>Though he may not have had the statistics correct at first, he makes a
>good point about how we use the resources available to us.
>For example if each of the 50+ or so players on just my mud were to use
>traceroute every 15mins to check if the machine is up or if there was
>a problem in the network routing, using the 45 packet reference above,
>that would be over 9000 packets each hour. It is easy to imagine this
>figure being even larger if we all adopted the idea that it does no
>harm to use our resources in this manner. Not to say I'm innocent in
>this regard (the amount of MUD traffic I must generate in one hour must
>dwarf any traceroutes) but it isn't very seemly to denounce someone who
>advocates more responsibilty.

Alex did not seem to be advocating responsibility so much as *restriction* of
resources.  If you refer to my original article, I did advocate *educating*
the users about such things before dropping a program on them they might not
understand.  But even 9000 packets an hour is, as you admit, small compared
to other ways we use net.bandwidth and, I would suspect, smaller than using
ping.  In your example, you suggest players checking every 15 mins... I assume
they are waiting for the machien to come up.  Well, many times when I've seen
people use ping for such purposes, they start up a ping and let it go until 
they get a response.  So the ping sends out 1 packet/sec, and let's assume you
are down the entire hour period... that's 3600 packets/person, or 180000
packets each hour.. 20 times that of traceroute.  Now, I think that all
players pinging your machine simulataneously for an hour is unlikely... but so
is all of them running traceroute every 15 minutes.

Bruce

-- 
--- sterling@netcom.com - sirbruce@gnu.ai.mit.edu - bwoodcoc@isis.cs.du.edu ---
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we use birth control, we use interesting little toys on occasion.  We moan like
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