Fair enough, I'll run my Beirut network in area 8.. sampsa On 8 Jan 2013, at 16:24, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote: I'm probably going to come back and make more comments on this later... However, a couple of points and responses right now... Eve today, areas do not correspond to adminstrative control that much. There are areas which have several different people responsible for different machines, and atleast I have "sub-delegated" parts of area 1 from time to time. Yes, we will be running out of areas eventually. Based on the current growth, I'd guess a couple of years at most, and then we're out. Areas should be used for administrative reasons, and relate less to any geographical constraints. DECnet areas work perfectly fine spanning large distances. "Sub-letting" areas should definitely be a valid approach. Each user in one area can still have their own area router, and their own connections to the rest of HECnet, as long as they also have interconnects within the area. Data mining is difficult, since there are different systems, with different possibilities of extracting it, and in different formats. A centralized repository of data is nice in many ways, but it is a headache to manage. That said, I could be convinced of setting something semi-automatic up. A reasonable way would be for people to give me machines to poll, and then I'd setup an automated process to poll those machines for files in a specific format. I can then create a database out of that, and make it available through the web, as well as over DECnet, and also as a summarized file. Anything would be pretty easy if we just have the data collected. I already have something of a start for this in the form of my database of nodes in HECnet. I'd need to extend it with more fields, but that would be pretty easy. It's all in Datatrieve today, and that should be accessible over DECnet right now (even though I seem to remember that VMS hosts had some problems with that). I'm already extracting information from that database for the hecnet web-page on MIM (accessible as Madame). So, if we can just decide on what we want, and how to make the information available, I'll sit down and write the code to fix it. Johnny On 2013-01-08 06:45, Cory Smelosky wrote: On 8 Jan 2013, at 00:25, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: On 01/07/2013 09:57 PM, Ian McLaughlin wrote: Yeah more and more of us are using Ciscos to do this. We really need to find a way around this issue that doesn't involve manual maintenance of routing info. Perhaps an agreed-upon entry in INFO.TXT ? That's still manually managed, but it's managed by the individual link owners. Well Brian raised the good point of "on which host?" ...I think the problem here is that INFO.TXT really looks like, to me as a relative HECnet n00b, a per-"domain" file...but there's no clear delineation of administrative domains here. We've been using areas, but we're running out of those, and there's no consistency in the node numbering within each area. We could all agree to have "an info node" with a particular node number within each area, but that won't work when we start having multiple administrative domains within a single area. Johnny talked about exactly this just today, in the context of Sampsa's relocation. Dividing lines between regions of administrative control will not correspond to area numbers for much longer, its sounds like. Yeah, I've been noticing that...I've up-to-now used a specific "info node" approach...but it DOES get a bit wonky when I divide my stuff, or skip a node number or re-use a node number. (On a semi-related note...I might implement personal node-number schemes: separating PDP-11 sims from DEC-20 sims from VMS sims from physical hardware and so on.) Perhaps a centralized database that maintains per-NODE info, not per-AREA info. Then that database could have a field that denotes the point of administrative control that is responsible for each node. Centralising the NODE info could solve a lot of problems and make data mining easier. ;) I'd also like basic (Geographic location(s) (see below for further comments), owner, that kind of stuff) per-area info to be defined in this central database. (To be honest, I'd then break it down in to sub, and sub sub areas but at times I can go a bit overboard with creating subcategories...I doubt anyone other than myself would like breaking down their areas /that/ much.) Then, some mechanism (either automated, manual, whatever) would then populate that database. Perhaps there could be several population mechanisms...a program that runs under VMS, RSX, RSTS/E, or whatever, and something over IP for everything else. A web interface to the database would also be nice. How would it be done? Flatfile and having Johnny or someone add all node info by hand? ;) -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA