This file is a compilation of the usenet history discussion files
from nethist.101090 through nethist.102190.  In the next file,
nethist.102590, the discussion takes off in several different
directions, most of which depart from this list.

The Players:

(BT)  Brad Templeton: [email protected]
       (Creator of the original list)

smb> Steve Bellovin: [email protected]
je> James Ellis: [email protected]
mh> Mark Horton: [email protected]
kk> Karl Kleinpaste: [email protected]
mcm> Mike Mitchell: [email protected]
rs> Rick Salz: [email protected]
gs> Gene Spafford: [email protected]
hs> Henry Spencer: [email protected]
trt> Tom Truscott: [email protected]
cvr> Chuq Von Rospach: [email protected]
aw> Amanda Walker: [email protected]
bob> Bob Sutterfield: [email protected]

[bj] Bruce Jones: [email protected] [list moderator]

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  The human-nets digest on the arpanet

>From Mark Horton Wed Sep 26 06:34 PDT 1990
mh> human-nets and sf-lovers were both equally important.

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> Both were equally important to Usenet, but I believe that
smb> human-nets came first on the ARPANET.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  The uucp program

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> The release of the uucp program with v7 UNIX provided the initial impetus.
smb> So did the Bourne shell.  The very first version of netnews was a 3-page
smb> shell script.  It supported multiple newsgroups, cross-posting, and
smb> subscription lists implemented as environment variables.  As best I can
smb> tell, this script has not survived.  (A few years ago, I did search for
smb> it, to no avail.)  Another motivation was some sort of local news system.
smb> On V6, Duke and UNC had a local news system that came from Somewhere.  But
smb> articles were limited to 512 bytes, and we didn't carry it forward to v7.
smb> A prime requirement was that there be a very efficient way to test for
smb> the presence of news (hence the checknews program).
smb>
smb> The original idea for netnews came from Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Notesfiles

>From Mark Horton Wed Sep 26 06:34 PDT 1990
mh> Notesfiles were around before Netnews at U of I - they belong
mh> after "uucp prog"

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> Notesfiles existed on Plato before this, but I don't think there
smb> was a UNIX version until after netnews.  Even if there was an
smb> earlier one, the cultural thread was netnews-driven -- notesfiles
smb> was adapted to speak the netnews protocols.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  The A-news system (Bellovin, Truscott)

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> Actually, I wrote a C language translation of my shell script; on
smb> an 11/45 that didn't even have 256K of memory, the shell was just
smb> too slow.  This version (pre-A) is also lost.  It was never released
smb> past Duke and UNC.  Truscott and Steve Daniel wrote the version of
smb> A news that was released.  Netnews was announced at Boulder Usenix
smb> (Jan '80), though the code wasn't quite ready.
smb>
smb> Some day, I'll write up what I remember of our design criteria.
smb> It's worth noting now that given the speed (or the lack thereof)
smb> of the machines we had, we utterly relied on the ease of writing
smb> shell scripts to experiment with protocol variants; compilation
smb> would have taken much too long.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  The first newsgroups
"fa" groups
"net." groups

>From Tom Truscott Tue Sep 25 06:57 PDT 1990
trt> The very first news groups were "NET." and local groups such as
trt> "dept".  Later Horton et al. oversaw the lower-casing of NET.  Only
trt> when ucbvax joined the net did "fa" appear.  Indeed I was unaware
trt> of the Arpanet mailing lists such as human-nets until ucbvax
trt> enlightened us.

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> Correct.  The original concept was that most of the traffic would
smb> be of the form now known as unix-wizards (or whatever it's called
smb> this week).  Growth was slow until Mark started feeding the mailing
smb> lists in because there was nothing to offer prospective customers.
smb> Given a ready source of material, people were attracted.
smb>
smb> It's interesting to note that (in my not very humble opinion) the
smb> quality of dialog (and the moderator's efforts) on human-nets are
smb> still essentially unsurpassed.  Only comp.risks is a serious rival
smb> (and probably a superior); I exempt otherrealms from discussion
smb> because it's a different sort of beast.

>From Mark Horton Wed Sep 26 06:34 PDT 1990
mh> i.e. the renaming of NET to be net

-=- -=- -=-

>From Tom Truscott Tue Oct 16 15:01 PDT 1990
trt> My recollection of the first sites were:
trt>   duke - unc
trt> then
trt>    phs (Duke Physiology dept. via 9600 baud wire) - duke - unc
trt> duke was a CS department PDP 11/70.
trt> unc was a CS department VAX I think.
       smb> No, an 11/45 at the time.
trt> phs was a PDP 11/60.
trt>
trt> There were uucp (non-usenet) connections for one or two other duke
trt> machines, and "research" at Bell Labs.  Perhaps "duke34" (a machine
trt> sitting next to "duke") was on Usenet too, but it barely counts.
trt>
trt> I think vax135 at Bell Labs (where UNIX 32V was developed) was the
trt> next Usenet member.  (Might have been Reed, I dunno).  vax135 caused
trt> an upheaval in A news, because they would not let uucp copy files
trt> to their system.
trt>
trt> As I recall, the very first implementation of news broadcast did
trt> something like:
trt>
trt>    uucp  -l  <newsarticle>  remote!/usr/spool/uucppublic/inbound
trt>
trt> We considered using uux but that would have been less efficient
trt> than a simple copy, and would have used up precious disk space.
trt> But vax135 would not permit the above uucp request, so we gave up
trt> and switched (overnight) to
trt>
trt>    uux  -r  remote!rnews  <newsarticle>
trt>
trt> Since there were so few sites compatibility was not a big issue!
trt> We figured the performance hit and space wastage was tolerable
trt> since there would be only a few articles per day.  To avoid stupid
trt> "exit 0" messages from uux we had to make a source code change to
trt> uuxqt, but then one needed to make source code changes to mail and
trt> uucp just to set the host name!  (We distributed a "setup.n"
trt> document, describing how to set up uucp.)

>From Steve Bellovin Tue Oct 16 15:22 PDT 1990
smb> We also had to change uucp to add to the list of legal commands,
smb> it being hard-wired in at the time.  Since some sites wouldn't even
smb> make that change, we added a mail encapsulation very early in the
smb> game.  The idea was to mail to some magic user name; periodically,
smb> a shell script would extract it.  The shell script would use mail
smb> itself to extract the mailbox, thus avoiding the need to do compatible
smb> locking.

>From Mark Horton Mon Oct 15 19:49 PDT 1990
mh> The first cross-country link was from duke to research, then from
mh> research to ucbvax, all on research's nickel.  I remember, while
mh> at Berkeley, exchanging email with the original A news developers,
mh> and being amazed that I could get a reply back a few hours later,
mh> even though research was polling both duke and ucbvax to pick up
mh> waiting mail.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  The mistake of net.general

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> net.general was a group intended to be read by everyone.  This
smb> worked while the net was still small.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Creating groups by typo or whim - net.joke, net.bizarre,
net.flame, net.gdead net.wobegon and others

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> The first joke newsgroups were net.suicide (the original article
smb> called for a meeting of some university suicide club on the roof
smb> of a building) and net.dead-babies, which contained a series of AP
smb> wire stories on a school bus accident.  I seem to recall a specific
smb> incident that prompted a particular individual to create them, but
smb> I no longer remember what it was.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Net goes international (Canada) (Spencer, Templeton)

>From [email protected] Sun Oct 21 22:07 PDT 1990
hs> utzoo is on the 1 June 1981 map.  (Copy on
hs> request.) My records say we joined the net on 13 May 1981.


> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> I've been wondering of late if that will ultimately be the
smb> greatest contribution of the net to history -- that it provides a
smb> cheap, reasonably accessible, mechanism for multi-way international
smb> communication.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  The B news software (Horton, Glickman)

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> The important point here is that B news -- as most of the enhancements
smb> to netnews software -- was load-driven.  The original A news had
smb> a number of design choices that made it unsuitable for a large net.
smb> (We estimated a maximum size of 100 sites, and 1-2 articles a day,
smb> net-wide....).  Many of the deficiencies could have been patched
smb> around (and indeed, many were in A+ news); the key problem was that
smb> the last-read time was a global concept that applied to all
smb> newsgroups; you couldn't read things out of order.
smb>
smb> The goal there (and in many other spots) was to have software free
smb> of databases, and especially central databases.  Instead, we chose
smb> to let the file system do the work.  This also worked to eliminate
smb> most of the explicit synchronization.  For example, article id's
smb> were limited to 14 characters or less, and named the file in
smb> /usr/spool/news that held the text.  No history file was needed
smb> for duplicate detection; stat() would tell you that.  Etc.

(BT)  Pathalias software (Honeyman)

>From Rick Salz Mon Sep 24 16:20 PDT 1990
rs> The first version of pathalias was written by Steve Bellovin while
rs> working on his doctorate at the University of North Caroline at
rs> Chapel Hill.  He posted it to Usenet in around 1982, and included
rs> patches to picked it up and installed it on allegra, a Bell Labs
rs> machine at Murray Hill, NJ.  At that time, allegra was the center
rs> of the UUCP mail world (a role since assumed by sites named ihnp4,
rs> seismo, and now uunet), and at the time when Usenet was starting
rs> to explode all over the place.  Before he left for Princeton, Peter
rs> had moved from tweaking the options, to doing serious redesign of
rs> most of the algorithms.  Peter is still maintaining the program,
rs> and it has followed him out to the University of Michigan.

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> Rich's chronology is about right, though I no longer remember the
smb> exact dates.  (Incidentally, there's apparently a line missing from
smb> the above paragraph.  Peter brought the code up on allegra.)  I
smb> also tried to gather the data, but the effort was too much for me.
smb> The data arrived in very ``dirty'' form, and especially after I
smb> join the Labs I had no time to reconcile it all.  And yes, the code
smb> is essentially all Peter's now; virtually nothing remains of my
smb> original.

>From Mark Horton Wed Sep 26 06:34 PDT 1990
mh> (I think pathalias came later, and was written by Bellovin.)

>From Gene Spafford Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
gs> My memory fails me on this, but someone had a "competing" program
gs> with pathalias that appeared just before (early 82?).  I believe
gs> it was called rpaths....   It simply took in news path information
gs> and mail paths, then saved out the shortest path between each two
gs> arbitrary sites.  It wasn't as sophisticated as pathalias because
gs> all edges were assumed to have unit length.
gs>
gs> I used it at Gatech for a year or so.  I remember that I shared
gs> path files with Rob Kolstad to feed the beast.  When it became
gs> evident there were a significant number of one-way links, most
gs> sites switched to pathalias.  We shouldn't forget that other program
gs> though (although I can't remember who wrote it -- John Quarterman?).
gs> When Mark started the mapping project, I shipped him the files I
gs> had.


>From Mike Mitchell Fri Oct 12 08:52 PDT 1990

mcm> I wrote a program called 'mkpath' back in '82-'83 that competed
mcm> with pathalias.  We used it on our pdp-11/60 because pathalias
mcm> wouldn't fit.  My first version did everything with disk files,
mcm> but it was too slow.  I don't think I ever released that version
mcm> to the net.  Someone on the net did request that I send him that
mcm> version, as the version he used ran out of memory on his list of
mcm> ~2000 sites.  My version was fairly simple; it looked for the
mcm> shortest path.  Pathalias had code to deal with the speed of the
mcm> connection.  I didn't have the resources to use that sort of
mcm> information.  When I got a VAX instead of a PDP, I stopped working
mcm> on 'mkpath'.  I also had a front-end to the mail program that used
mcm> the mkpath database.  I called the front-end 'nmail'.  I don't have
mcm> any copies laying around, but I could check our news archives.  I
mcm> was working at Ikonas Graphics at the time.  Their site name was
mcm> 'ikonas'.

>From Gene Spafford Fri Oct 12 09:18 PDT 1990
gs>
gs> That's the one!  It was mkpath, because I remember "nmail".
gs>
gs> I was using it on our Vax, and distributed it to some other sites
gs> and mkpath was in some use in various places around the net.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Decvax and Bill Shannon's contribution

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> This was moderately early; they picked up the slack when assorted
smb> AT&T sites no longer could/would.

>From Mark Horton Mon Oct 15 19:49 PDT 1990
mh> By the way, I've seen mention crediting Bill Shannon with the
mh> decvax link.  Bill was there and involved, but most of the credit
mh> goes to Armando Stettner of DEC, who made it happen and got the
mh> phone bill footed.  At one point in the early 80's he announced at
mh> Usenix that decvax's phone bill was running a quarter million
mh> dollars/year, officially sanctioned by DEC as a goodwill gesture
mh> to the net!

>From James Ellis Tue Oct 16 08:43 PDT 1990
je> Yes - I remember Armando's announcement of $250k/yr but can't recall
je> which conference it was.  By that time we were becoming numb to
je> the expenses people would go to just to pass news and e-mail around
je> to other people.  Especially since Duke never had to pay any of
je> those bills!  Still, this was a milestone.
je>
je> Actually, although research was one of the original sites officially,
je> I didn't think they ran news until some time into the game.  At
je> the Winter 80 (January) Usenix I gave a short talk announcing the
je> creation of Usenet and inviting anyone to join.  We even had printed
je> up little forms for folks to fill out giving their uucp info, etc.
je> (Sadly, I don't think any of these have survived.)  There were two
je> incentives for folks to be interested.
je>
je> First was supposed to be the news software itself.  Since we expected
je> traffic on the order of a handful of items a week, one of the design
je> goals was that the news system be a useful tool for strictly local
je> use.  (Which as already noted, led to the use of the "NET." prefix
je> for non-local news.)  We had to convince people to pick up the
je> software for its own sake and then hope they would find it easy
je> and convenient to tie into network news as well.  Or so we thought.
je> In retrospect it clearly was the net-wide aspect of news that
je> attracted everyone's attention.
je>
je> Second we felt we needed to get across the idea that Usenet was
je> already a fully-functioning non-local network rather than the
je> patchwork of hopes and scripts that really existed.  By this time
je> we did have a uucp connection to research at Bell Labs thanks to
je> Dennis Ritchie and Tom Truscott.  But I don't recall that they ran
je> news.  (Steve B - just what state was the news software in at all
je> at that point, anyway?)
[See Steve's comments below -bj]
je> We put them on the map that was displayed
je> at the conference anyway as a Usenet "site".  (So the confusion
je> between uucp-net and Usenet dates back to here!) Dennis wouldn't
je> let us name research though out of fears that BTL management wouldn't
je> like the idea so I had to refer to it as an unnamed research site
je> with a dot over on the East Coast.
je>
je> This was the first Usenix I'd ever been to so I was rather nervous
je> but it seemed to go well.  Made everyone laugh and applaud when I
je> described Tom's homebrew autodialer!  It seems like it was only a
je> few days after the talk that our first site requested a connection
je> - Reed college in Portland, OR of all places.  They had no dialer
je> either so we had to call them - they were willing to be billed for
je> the charges.   I don't recall if we ever billed them or if we were
je> ever paid, but Duke's department Chairman at the time seemed very
je> willing (to me) to foot some expenses to get Usenet off the ground.
je> Then there was a long drought and I don't recall who the next site
je> added was.
je>
je> I do recall that for a long while after Berkeley and Research were
je> providing cross-country connectivity, the connections were often
je> very wasteful.  One of the worst examples was that Tektronix, in
je> Oregon, couldn't send e-mail to some other site (Reed?) a local
je> phone call away because it was against policy to set up the
je> connection.  But they could, and did, send mail via
je> Berkeley/Research/Duke going cross-country twice to reach a
je> local phone call away!

>From Amanda Walker Tue Oct 16 09:11 PDT 1990
aw> Indeed.  I suspect that there are any number of examples of this,
aw> but the most egregious in my experience was at CWRU.  The ECMP
aw> department had a VAX 11/780 on Usenet ("cwruecmp"), and the campus
aw> computer center had a DEC-20 in the room next door.  The machines
aw> were separated by a grand total of about 30 feet and a piece of
aw> wallboard, but the computer center was not at all interested in
aw> "catering" to "those CS types" by stringing an RS-232 line between
aw> them.  So, it was possible to send mail between them, but only by
aw> sending via a route resembling:
aw>
aw>     crwuecmp => decvax => ucbvax (UUCP)
aw>     ucbvax => columbia (CU20A, I think) (ARPANET)
aw>     columbia => cmu-cs-c => cwru20 (CCnet)
aw>
aw> Yup, that's three networks, and two coasts just to get through a
aw> piece of sheetrock :-).  Took about a week, too.

>From Steve Bellovin Tue Oct 16 09:00 PDT 1990
smb> I think that my pre-A C-language version was running then.  The
smb> efficiency of the shell script was too low, and I'm fairly certain
smb> that A-news wasn't quite ready yet.  (In the grand tradition of
smb> computer companies everywhere, we announced before we had a
smb> product...)
smb>
smb> A year or two later, CSnet was announced.  I remember that we
smb> commented how this showed the true difference between grad students
smb> and faculty.  When we wanted to connect universities and research
smb> sites, we wrote some software quickly, handed out a few simple
smb> forms, and scrounged everything, from dialers to connectivity.
smb> When some professors wanted to do the same thing, they got a grant
smb> from NSF, set up formal support and monitoring stations, secured
smb> DARPA permission to connect to the ARPANET, published a bunch of
smb> papers, etc.

-=- -=- -=-

>From Mark Horton Wed Sep 26 06:34 PDT 1990
> The first used car ad probably belongs in here somewhere.

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> The true meaning here is rather amusing.  When we were arguing over
smb> the design of the protocols, I argued strongly for many local --
smb> single-machine -- groups, with the sole group NET to be broadcast.
smb> Jim Ellis pointed out the need for regional group for things like
smb> used car ads; thus, NET.* was born.  (Originally, network-wide
smb> groups were identified syntactically; hence the use of all caps to
smb> distinguish them from anything local.)  Jim prevailed (fortunately);
smb> naturally, we were all very amused when the first used car ad showed
smb> up on NET.general.  The original designers all sent congratulatory
smb> messages to the perplexed poster.
smb>
smb> We discussed, but never resolved, the difference between a distribution
smb> and an interest group.  No solution seemed right.  11 years later,
smb> the current implementation suffers from all the faults we talked
smb> about way back when.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Chain letters over the net.

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> This was later, I think.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  AT&T's contribution (allegra, ihnp4 etc.)

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> Research and mhtsa were much earlier, and I think vax135.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Widespread net growth and international growth

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Forged article critical of Unix (1981)

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> This was not so much a pure forged article as a forgery designed
smb> to conceal the unauthorized posting of a critical paper by Don Norman.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  K News (proposal)

>From Rick Salz Mon Sep 24 16:20 PDT 1990
rs> K News is a non-topic; it generated, what, a month or two of
rs> discussion?

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Domain style naming (Postel et al)

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> I don't think this is particularly related to Usenet.  The impact
smb> of Usenet on the ARPANET was more as a (strong) catalyst to force
smb> re-examination (and benign neglect) on the strict policies against
smb> interconnection.  Uucp mail into the ARPANET became a major force
smb> long before it was legit.  And it was obviously known to, and
smb> ignored by, many of the Powers that Were.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  The net.jokes.q creation and deletion

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Formation of the "Backbone"

>From: [email protected] (Mark Horton)
mh> The backbone is first mentioned in the July 1983 map - it was not
mh> mentioned on the Jan 1983 map.  In July 1983 there were both logical
mh> maps (showing all hosts) and geographic maps (showing the biggest
mh> host in each city on a US map.)

>From Gene Spafford Mon Sep 24 18:58 PDT 1990
mh> backbone creation, circa 1984

>From Gene Spafford Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
gs> I was the "father" of the backbone.  It came about from two different
gs> things.
gs>
gs> 1) I had been maintaining the list of newsgroups for a while, and
gs> was concerned at the time about the unrestrained growth in newsgroups
gs> (little did I know....).  I was also concerned about the very flat
gs> namespace.  At the time, I put together a mailing list to talk
gs> about renaming newsgroups.  Principles in that group were Chuq von
gs> Rospach and Mark Horton.  The discussion didn't go anywhere in
gs> particular at the time, but I kept the list as a group to talk
gs> about matters of importance.  The people listed were admins or
gs> prominent sites....soon to be the backbone.
gs>
gs> 2) I was aggressively trying to established better uucp connections
gs> to gatech.  I did some hand mapping with pathalias output and awk
gs> counts on news articles, and came up with a small set of "regions"
gs> on the net with important machines connecting those regions to
gs> others.  I set up connections from gatech to those machines and
gs> encouraged some other cross-connections to improve propagation
gs> (anybody remember those mail messages?  A total stranger telling
gs> you to set up connections with someone else... :-)
gs>
gs> Eventually, by the time of the great renaming after the 1986 Usenix
gs> conference, I formalized the backbone in a regular posting with a
gs> map and a description of what consituted a backbone site --- good
gs> connectivity, carrying the mainstream groups, and a commitment to
gs> stable news and mail software.  These were the same things I had
gs> encouraged earlier on, or the reasons I had put people on the
gs> mailing list.

gs> >From Gene Spafford Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
gs>
gs> Here is what the "backbone" looked like at the end:
gs>
gs> A Usenet "backbone" site is one which exchanges every (non-local) news
gs> article it receives with at least two other backbone sites; or which is
gs> the main newsfeed for a particular geographical area (e.g., Australia)
gs> or special news gateway (e.g., inet) and exchanges news with at least
gs> one other backbone site.  This exchange is done (theoretically) with
gs> minimum delay.  Thus, any article submitted to a backbone site is
gs> supposed to propagate to all other backbone sites within a very short
gs> time period. (Under actual conditions, your mileage may vary.)  To be
gs> labelled as part of the "backbone," a site must also:
gs>     * be of sufficient capacity to handle the load of news;
gs>     * be of sufficient capacity and connectivity to handle the load
gs>       of mail generated by replies to news articles and as submissions
gs>       to mailing lists and moderated groups sent through the backbone;
gs>     * be running a recent version of the news software, and keep
gs>       up-to-date with new releases and patches;
gs>     * provide a stable news and mail relay service, preferably including
gs>       a mailer understanding domains and domain-based addressing;
gs>     * be staffed by experienced, responsible, capable staff who
gs>       will maintain news and mail, and quickly respond to problem
gs>       reports and requests for assistance;
gs>     * wish to be advertised as a backbone site, thus taking part in
gs>       discussions and debate as well as becoming a target for abuse
gs>       from the net-at-large;
gs>     * evidence some measure of financial and/or political stability
gs>       so as to be able to remain as a backbone site for the
gs>       indefinite future.
gs> Site admins wishing their site included in this posting should
gs> document the above points in mail to "[email protected]".
gs>
gs> Each backbone site normally feeds some number of well-connected
gs> secondary sites, most of which are not "leaf" (terminal) nodes.
gs> These secondary sites feed the news out to other distribution and leaf
gs> nodes, and so on.
gs>
gs> For optimal news distribution, each site should establish an "L" type
gs> link with a site closely connected to a backbone site. This will help
gs> ensure that any articles submitted from that site get propagated to the
gs> whole net with a minimum of delay.  Sites should *not* request a news
gs> feed from a backbone site unless they are willing to feed at least five
gs> or six (or more) other, non-terminal sites.
gs>
gs> Note that some backbone links (viz., ALL--munnari,ncar--nbires,
gs> uunet--mcvax) do not carry all newsgroups, usually meaning "talk" and
gs> some "rec" groups, but sometimes also including "soc", "sci", "news",
gs> "misc", and "comp" newsgroups.  The European component of Usenet
gs> receives a limited number of groups from outside Europe, as well as
gs> having a number of active "eunet" newsgroups, and exchanges all those
gs> articles via X.25 links.
gs>
gs> To send mail to the administrators of all the backbone sites, address
gs> your mail to "[email protected]".  If you wish to send mail to the
gs> administrator of a particular site, consult the uucp map for the name
gs> and address of the appropriate individual(s).  (In Europe uucp map
gs> entries are obtained through the national backbone's "netdir"
gs> service).

       [For the map itself, see the file "backbone.map"
        and other maps also in this directory -bj]

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Monthly postings, newuser group, commonly asked questions.

>From Gene Spafford Mon Sep 24 18:58 PDT 1990
mh> monthly postings of FYI stuff about 1984

>From Gene Spafford Mon Sep 24 18:58 PDT 1990
gs> monthly postings of newsgroups -- pre 1981

>From Gene Spafford Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
gs> In 1981, Adam Buschbaum was posting an article now and then that
gs> listed the newsgroups as he knew them.  Adam was a HS student whose
gs> father was at Bell Labs.  When Adam went off to college (I think)
gs> in 1982, he asked me to take over the postings because he would no
gs> longer have access.  I have continued to do this as the list of
gs> active groups.
gs>
gs> Shortly thereafter, by a year or two, I started collecting a few
gs> other things that appeared to be particularly useful for net readers
gs> to post everything all together.  I don't have the dates of when
gs> I added items, but the first two to be added were the "Frequently
gs> asked questions" by Jerry Schwarz and Chuq's "Netiquette" article.
gs> You might try to find them and ask the dates.

>From Gene Spafford Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
gs> The newusers group was the second moderated group created in
gs> summer 1986.

>From Chuq Von Rospach Fri Oct 12 09:04 PDT 1990

cvr> A note on the Netiquette document. It was one of the earliest (and
cvr> if you ask me a very successful) experiments in groupware. It was
cvr> a document by consensus with about 30 people throwing email around
cvr> and working up various pieces. I'm not sure I was as much writer
cvr> as coordinator, although the final draft was worked up by me.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  net.women.only experiment

>From Gene Spafford Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
gs> I remember this as 1984-1985

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Arpa mailing lists merge with usenet groups.

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> Comparatively early.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Subgroups to divert traffic:

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  net.startrek, net.abortion, source code discussion

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Hoaxes etc. (kremvax)

>From Amanda Walker Thu Oct 11 16:32 PDT 1990
aw> I am pretty certain that the (in)famous kremvax posting was done
aw> 1983, since I believe that I read it before I left CWRU (which
aw> was around January 1984).


-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  The re-emergence of mailing lists

>From Gene Spafford Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
gs> The mailing lists never went away, really.  I used to post Rich
gs> Zellich's list of mailing lists along with the newsgroup list until
gs> they got too large.  Then I tried extracting out the uucp only
gs> lists and a few things that weren't in Zellich's list.  It became
gs> a regular posting, and hardly a month goes by where I don't get
gs> one or two new ones added from people starting new ones or advertising
gs> old ones.
gs>
gs> The flaps over net.women.only and net.motss created a small surge
gs> in new mailing lists at that time.


-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  net.columbia and naming debates

-=- -=- -=-

>From Mark Horton Wed Sep 26 06:34 PDT 1990
mh> The UUCP Project (Horton et al)

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> I assume this is the UUCP Mapping Project, which was designed
smb> to supply the data for pathalias.

>From Rick Salz Wed Sep 26 07:10 PDT 1990
rs> Mark can probably fill in the gaps, and time-frame, for this.
rs> Early Usenix proceedings (I guess anything before Portland counts
rs> as early these days) have reports from the UUCP Mapping Project,
rs> and I think a map, too.

*This is a message forwarded by Rick:
>From [email protected] Mon Nov 27 21:28:17 1989
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 89 20:36:11 EST
From: Scott Bradner <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
The original data was collected by Steve Bellovin but he sort of
gave up at some point.  I think that Peter Honeyman did some
collecting back then also.

At that time I was running wjh12 as a internet/uucp/bitnet gateway.
I needed some better data.  So I:
       1/ had a programmer here rig up a scan-the-news-headers program
          to get an operating base
       2/ sent out:
           a) a posting to some newsgroup asking for the info
           b) letters to usenet & root at all nodes that I
               had found by scanning headers
           c) then to all nodes found in the new data

When I started the process I got calls from Rob Kolstad & Mark
Horton Rob offered to help in the data gathering, we agreed to have
him start at one end of the alphebet & me at the other.  Mark was
about to do the same thing, Rob & I agreed to pass on the data to
Mark as we got it done.  After the 1st full pass, Rob & I passed
all operations over to Mark & the mapping project.


>From Mark Horton Fri Sep 28 16:01 PDT 1990

mh> Maps are a very good point.  The first maps from about 1981 had
mh> about 15 sites on them and were drawn in ASCII.  (This for Usenet.)
mh> They grew until in 1983 or so they were too big for ASCII and they
mh> were drawn on paper.  My ex-wife Karen and I did these early maps,
mh> got copies, and handed them out at Usenix conferences.
mh>
mh> After awhile, Bill and Karen Shannon took this over (around 1984-5)
mh> and made multi-page ASCII maps of Usenet.  After about 1985 the
mh> net was too big for this.
mh>
mh> Recently Brian Reid has put out Postscript geographical maps of
mh> Usenet.
mh>
mh> The earliest UUCP (email) maps were in people's heads - they would
mh> use the Usenet map to route mail.  Every so often someone would
mh> post a message "I'm going to make a map, everybody send me your
mh> L.sys file" and 6 months later they would emerge from under the
mh> avalanche of responses and give up.  If I recall correctly, both
mh> Lauren Weinstein and Steve Bellovin did this at one time.
mh>
mh> The current map started when Scott Bradner and Rob Kolstad undertook
mh> the effort and stuck it out enough to finish the map.  At that time
mh> they handed it over to our UUCP Project which was organized with
mh> 10 or so regional coordinators to maintain it and post it regularly.
mh>
mh> The UUCP Project, which was founded by Karen Summers and I took
mh> over in 1986, ran from 1985 to 1988.  It did the UUCP Map (Mel
mh> Pleasant supervised the regional coordinators), produced and
mh> distributed smail 2 (Chris Seiwald and Larry Auton were the authors)
mh> and did domain registrations for UUCP sites (myself and Tim Thompson).
mh>
mh> In 1988, UUNET offered virtually free domain registrations, and we
mh> closed down the domain and software parts of the UUCP Project.
mh> Mel took on the mapping portion in conjunction with UUNET.  He's
mh> still doing it today.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  The emergence of voting for creating newsgroups

>From Gene Spafford Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
gs> As I remember, this phased in from about 1987 on.  As the influence
gs> of the backbone began to wane, in part from workload, and in part
gs> from flak, we would float calls for discussion of new groups, and
gs> a sort of show of support.  When the backbone "died" a more formal
gs> mechanism took it's place about 6 months later.  I seem to recall
gs> that the anarchy in place as people started creating groups and
gs> flaming each other brought that on.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  RN & Kill files (Wall)

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> Note again that this was a load-driven development.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  News batching and compression

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> Ditto.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Checkgroups messages (Spafford)

>From Gene Spafford Mon Sep 24 18:58 PDT 1990
> checkgroups -- late 1986

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> The whole issue of control messages was and is troubling.  The
smb> original versions of netnews had no control functions because we
smb> knew we couldn't authenticate the messages.  (Yes, we knew about
smb> public key cryptography and digital signatures.  If nothing else
smb> -- and I had read the RSA paper by then -- V7 included
smb> enroll/xsend/xget.)
smb>
smb> Some of the code to handle some messages was dangerously buggy in
smb> the early days.  I interviewed at the Labs very soon after B news
smb> came out.  When I entered the office of a Very Prominent UNIX guru,
smb> the first words out of his mouth were ``Netnews B is a tool of the
smb> devil''.  (As an example of an early bug, the code would honor
smb> requests to rmgroup ../../../../../.. -- and recall that v7 did
smb> not honor setuid if root did the exec.)

>From Gene Spafford Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
gs> Checkgroups was added to B news by Rick Adams and myself in the
gs> months following the 1986 summer Usenix.  I seem to remember February
gs> of 87 as the actual first posting.  This was in 2.11 B news

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  The problems with the old releases of B news

>From Gene Spafford Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
gs> Continued at least into 1989 when I would get error messages
gs> when creating new moderated groups.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Line Eater Bug

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Moderated newsgroups:
       a) mod.announce
       b) mod.newprod and commercial information on the net

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> Here we see a return to syntactic decisions.

>From Gene Spafford Mon Sep 24 18:58 PDT 1990
gs> moderated groups -- late 1986 (after summer Usenix in Atlanta)

>From Gene Spafford Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
gs> mod.announce was the first -- an experiment.  Mark Horton created
gs> it after Rick Adams had modified the news to support it, backbone
gs> site admins installed it, and I started sending out lists of
gs> moderator addresses.
gs>
gs> As I remember, Larry Auton (now [email protected]) came up with
gs> the idea originally at our "backbone" meeting at the Atlanta Usenix.
gs> (Present were Horton, Pleasant, Adams, Auton, Heiby, Fair, Woods,
gs> Beals, Spencer?, Jackson (Curtis), and me.  There were at least
gs> one or two more present, but I don't remember them.  It was 3/4 of
gs> the "backbone" of the time.)

>From Gene Spafford Thu Oct 11 20:15 PDT 1990
gs>
gs> moderated groups existed prior to 1986. They came about in 1984 when
gs> Rick released B News 2.10.  What came in 2.11 that Larry Auton (with
gs> input from Mel Pleasant, too, as I remember) thought of was the idea
gs> of the "newspaths" file to get submissions to the moderators.
gs> Moderated groups weren't working well up to that point because the
gs> users didn't like the idea of manually mailing things to the moderator.

>From Karl Kleinpaste Fri Oct 12 18:41 PDT 1990
kk> You must include mod.ber in here.  mod.ber was a moderated group
kk> created by/for Brian E Redman (of HDB [HoneyDanBer] UUCP) as a
kk> source of weekly(?) summaries of Usenet traffic.  The idea was, I
kk> think, that the Usenet was getting _SO_ big (heehee) that we needed
kk> volunteers summarizing things for us so we could just sort of keep
kk> track of the highlights and subscribe to groups along the way when
kk> we noticed interesting topic threads in mod.ber.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  netnews software implemented on VM (IBM Mainframes)

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Stargate (Weinstein)

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  NSA Baiting in messages

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> Not really significant of anything but paranoia, if you ask me.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Big Net personal fights
       a) some result in lawsuit threats (Mark Ethan Smith)
       b) some result in people being bounced temporarily from the net
          (Maroney)
       c) some result in people being removed permanently.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  The great renaming (Horton)

>From Rick Salz Mon Sep 24 16:20 PDT 1990
rs> The renaming was instigated and done by Rick Adams because his
rs> news/sys file was getting unwieldy.

>From Gene Spafford Mon Sep 24 18:58 PDT 1990
gs> grand renaming -- started July 86, ended March 87

>From Mark Horton Wed Sep 26 06:34 PDT 1990
mh> Actually, Rick Adams was the prime force behind this.

>From Gene Spafford Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
gs>
gs> Actually, there were two discussions of renaming prior to the one
gs> in 86/87.   I started one, and Chuq started the other.  Rick was
gs> in the mailing list for my discussion.   The idea was one that
gs> finally "ripened" by 1986.  Rick was the one who did all the
gs> postings, but it certainly wasn't all his idea.  As I remember,
gs> the group of us involved in the design floated a number of ideas,
gs> but Rick was the one who condensed it and came up with the final
gs> proposal.
gs>
gs> The idea for the top level hierarchies I believe came from Mel
gs> Pleasant at the Usenix meeting.  I remember we decided the names
gs> of all the hierarchies at that time except for misc or rec, which
gs> Rick added later.

>From Chuq Von Rospach Fri Oct 12 09:04 PDT 1990
cvr>
cvr> I think the one added later was talk. Talk was the only
cvr> top-level domain added specifically to allow admins to not carry
cvr> groups -- the pariah groups.  This was done (if I remember correctly)
cvr> because it was a lot easier than simply trying to make them go
cvr> away.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  The merging of moderated groups into the hierarchy.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  The decline in propagation for groups outside of "comp" and "news"

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> This was part of the hidden (but widely admitted) agenda of the
smb> renaming.  In particular, there was a struggle to keep many groups
smb> out of ``talk'', which everyone knew would be the first to go.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Creation of rec.humor.funny
(first ultra-moderated non-mailing-list -- Templeton)

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Battle over the expiry dates on rec.mag.otherrealms. (Von Rospach)

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  The attempt to form comp.protocols.tcp-ip.eniac. (Webber)

>From Gene Spafford Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
gs> This was in the summer of 87.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  The misnaming of soc.culture.china -> 30 day voting time.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Attempt to remove talk.bizarre from the net for the "VOLUME,VOLUME,
    VOLUME" game.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  "jj@portal" (Rob Noha) begs for money on the net.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  General problems with Portal, and the issue of pay-for-access net s
ites.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Attempts to form groups for drugs and sex.

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> This belongs earlier.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Creation of the "alt" hierarchy.

>From Rick Salz Mon Sep 24 16:20 PDT 1990
rs> John Gilmore and Brian Reid, with help from Carl at pyramid, created
rs> alt.  I think the reasons were that Brian didn't like mod.gourmand-->
rs> rec.recipes, and that John didn't like having no unmoderated source
rs> group.  I would contact them at first, however.

> From Steve Bellovin Wed Oct 10 19:48 PDT 1990
smb> Certainly true of Brian.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  UUCP project and .US domain. (Gilmore, Horton)

>From Rick Salz Mon Sep 24 16:20 PDT 1990
rs> The UUCP project was started by Horton, with Weinstein, and Mel.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Arbitron news statistics (Reid)

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Telebit releases the Trailblazer.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  UUNET arrives (Adams) (Seismo fades)

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Internet & TCP/IP begins to pervade the net.
       The backbone begins to fade.

>From Gene Spafford Mon Sep 24 18:58 PDT 1990
gs> backbone goes away, 1987

>From Gene Spafford Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
gs> I found a note to myself, June 15 1988, where I said that I
gs> considered the backbone to be dead and I would no longer post
gs> a "backbone" map.  I removed the word "backbone" from all my
gs> regular postings starting that month.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  NNTP causes news to propagate too fast.

>From Rick Salz Mon Sep 24 16:20 PDT 1990
rs> NNTP and the large-scale gatewaying into newsgroups is Erik
rs> Fair's doing.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  PC-Pursuit

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Reliable links to Europe

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Crazy creation of groups in the alt hierarchy. (Weiner)

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  alt.gourmand kepr rather than being renamed. (Reid)

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  AT&T decides not to forward mail.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  "biz" and "inet" hierarchies.  "Gnu" hierarcy.

>From [email protected] Thu Oct 11 14:20 PDT 1990
bob> gnu.* came to me in the shower on the morning of 17 Mar 88.  It
bob> was established using Erik Fair's gateway code (originally written
bob> for the inet groups).  The join-up invitation went out to the news
bob> neighbors of tut.cis.ohio-state.edu on Mon, 2 May 88 17:15:29 EDT.
bob> By ten days later it was well-enough populated and propagated for
bob> Spaf to add it to his "alternative news hierarchies" article.  It
bob> had penetrated well into the UK by 27 May 88, and via mcvax onto
bob> the continent (EUnet) on 18 Jul 88.  Brian Reid's USENET Readership
bob> Report for June 88 reported most gnu.* groups with over 25%
bob> propagation, and August's showed over 50% - possibly the fastest
bob> growth of any alternative hierarchy.  gnu.* underwent its first
bob> Great Renaming yesterday, perhaps a sign of maturity :-)
bob>
bob> I asked Spaf to add gnu.announce to the "backbone"'s list of
bob> moderated aliases - in effect, requesting a mild policy change in
bob> the administration of the Usenet (its administrative structure
bob> would formally begin carrying some of the administrative freight
bob> for a few non-Usenet hierarchies, removing their ability to claim
bob> to be completely separate from and independent of the mainstream
bob> "Usenet Proper").  In a precedent-setting step, the request was
bob> provisionally approved on 14 May 88.  This opened the way for the
bob> mechanized moderation of Brian Reid's alt.gourmand and others since.


-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  comp.sys.next violates voting rules

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  AT&T complains about source code on Killer, shuts it off
       temporarily(?)

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  comp.binaries.ibm.pc goes to 8 megs/month
       -- gets moderated in first,
       and only, moderator election. (Dhesi)

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  The forming of comp.society.women
       (proposed as comp.women) (Roberts)

>From Gene Spafford Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
gs> Hmm, I seem to believe this was near the end of 88, beginning of 89.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Oct/88 Internet Worm (perhipheral to usenet)

>From Gene Spafford Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
gs> Nov 2, 1988, to be exact. :-)

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Nov/88 The battle over rec.humor.funny (Templeton, Richmond)

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  C News (Spencer, Collyer)

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  NN (actually started earlier)

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  B News 3.0 (Raymond)

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  alt.fusion, sci.physics.fusion

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  More rec.humor.funny
       -- Jokebook, Expansion to GEnie, Denninger's vote

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Aquaria alt, rec, sci (sci.skeptic?)

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Battles about naming, Australian voting etc.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  shareware on usenet

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  flow mapping

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  bitnet merging into USENET, more newsreaders etc.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  more moderator copyright (telecom, sci.med.aids)

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  June 89/ClariNet

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  In Moderation Network

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  More forgery

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  alt.sex, alt.sex.bondage and "Cindy's Torment"
       -- cutoff at U of T, etc.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  AlterNet, NYSERNET/PSI, NSFNet, FARRnet

>From Rick Salz Mon Sep 24 16:20 PDT 1990
rs> AlterNet, NYSERNET/PSI -- non-issues.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Confiscation of USENET sites involved with phrack.

>From Gene Spafford Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
gs> At this point, it is not clear that any Usenet site was confiscated
gs> because of Phrack.  Some Usenet nodes were confiscated, but the ones I
gs> know about were confiscated because they were used for the storage and
gs> transmission of trade-secret AT&T code, not because they had anything
gs> to do with Phrack.
gs>
gs> Neidorf's machine was confiscated to search for evidence for the
gs> trial, but it was not a Usenet node.

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  EUNet and its policies (pay for feed, limit feed, not all groups)

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  rec.arts.erotica

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Alt explosion more alt bannings, rise of alt.sex

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  trial newsgroups

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  USENET over 10 megs/month

>From Mark Horton Wed Sep 26 06:34 PDT 1990
mh> Surely you mean over 10 megs/day.  It's about 12.5 now.

>From Gene Spafford Thu Oct 11 20:05 PDT 1990
gs>
gs> I'm not sure about this, but the figures I compiled on Oct 1, 1988 for
gs> the IETF meething showed 11,000 sites; over 1800 articles per day;
gs> over 4MB of traffic per day, average; and over 450 newsgroups.
gs> My figures were taken from Rick Adam's summary stats posted from
gs> Seismo or uunet, and from Brian Reid's arbitron stats.
gs>
gs> That same presentation had these figures taken from stats by Adams,
gs> Spencer, Horton, Bellovin and Reid:
gs>
gs>    1979   3 sites, ~ 2 articles per day
gs>    1980      15 sites, ~10 articles per day
gs>    1981 150 sites, ~20 articles per day
gs>    1982 400 sites, ~50
gs>    1983 600 sites, 120
gs>    1984 900 sites, 225
gs>    1985  1300 sites, ~375 articles per day, +1MB per day
gs>    1986  2500 sites, ~500, 2MB+
gs>    1987  5000 sites, 1000 per day, 2.5+MB
gs>    1988 11000 sites, 1800, 4+MB
gs>
gs> Volume growth is exponential in number of sites, not in number of
gs> newsgroups (as some have claimed).  Plot the figures -- they make nice
gs> curves.


-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  BIFF and further use of forgery

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  Alt.sex becomes #1 read USENET group

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  comp.unix.sco -- debate over corporations and the net (yet again)

-=- -=- -=-

(BT)  June 90/"Internet Porno Ring"/Houston Chronicle

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