RIPE 37

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Netnews-WG
RIPE 37, Amsterdam September 2000

Chair Dave Wilson, HEAnet;
Scribe Fotis Georgatos, RIPE NCC.

Agenda agreed as published.

Minutes from the Budapest meeting RIPE agreed.

Flowmaps, presentation by Kai Siering.
Slides available at http://newshome.uu.org/RIPE-37/

Following on from work by Brian Reid and Heiko Rupp.

Geographical 2D and 3D maps turn out not to be helpful,
so turned into direction of using logical ones.
Considered other 2D mappings newsdist and makefeedmap.
Now using Cichlid 3D client-server visualization package.

Makes nice pictures!
Data from innstats, based on article count rather than volume.
Source available by 13th Sep 2000.

Expected developments: configure from file (at present
recompiles for any changes -- takes ~5 min).
Appearance depends on threshold below which feeds are ignored,
which in turn depends on what you want to use it for.


NHNS, presentation by Daniel Diaz.
Slides available at http://galore.convex.es/nhns/DOC/ripe37.ppt

Following up the 'groupsync' project; using TXT RRs in the DNS
for newsgroup descriptions and RP RRs for moderators.
Piloted in a detached DNS cloud but now in production at
usenet.nhns.net. 472 TLHs included.

Primary nh.nhns.net maintained by daily file transfer from
ftp.isc.org.

Tools newsync (5 min run, not yet ported to diablo), nhlookup,
nh-xfer. Some stats tools.
Procedure written for delegation and secondary operation.
Still to do:
newsync for diablo,
mechanism for ensuring data is fresh,
more delegation.
An access method for MS News products would be valuable.

The scheme depends on delegation to lower-level nhns servers
to distribute server use, effort and bandwidth, but very little
is delegated at present. There is a management problem if the
delegated server maintainer and the hierarchy authority are not
the same person, and it is worse if either has no deputy.

The WG needs to promote the activity by publicizing its
benefits (eg single service for newsgroup and out-of-band data).
Daniel and Dave will discuss this promotion with ISC and
news.admin.hierarchies as appropriate.
Agree the way forward at the next WG meeting.
Discuss standardization (RFC?) at the next WG meeting.
All will consider volunteering for delegation of one or more
hierarchies.