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Skriven 2009-04-20 03:18:07 av FidoNews Robot (2:2/2.0)
Ärende: FidoNews 26:16 [02/05]: General Articles
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                        GENERAL ARTICLES
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                  Trimming the FidoNet hierarchy
                  By NC280, Michiel van der Vlist
                  2:280/5555

Summary
-------

This is another plea to reduce the FidoNet hierarchy by at least one
level. Fidonet has shrunk from some 36000 listed nodes in the second
half of the previous decade to some 4500 listed node per nodelist.107
of last Friday. It is anyone's guess how much of these are dead wood,
but suspicion is that it is considerable. This is a plea to improve
the situation by reducing the number of hierarchical levels.

Why reduce the number of levels?
--------------------------------

Last Friday a nodelist clean-up was performed. Dead wood was removed
from Region 31, Austria. Only one node out of the six listed last week
remained. Soon it will disappear as a region and the remaining node
will be transferred to a neighbour region. Possibly even by next
Friday. R31 has shrunk way below critical mass and so the decision to
not continue as a region of its own is a wise decision. Keeping up
appearances is not compatible with "ensuring the smooth operation of
the network", which is the job of the coordinators.

This incident once again raises the question of whether FidoNet really
needs four levels of hierarchy. Now that FidoNet has shrunk to a
fraction of what it ever was, do we need all that administrative
overhead? Has it not become a liability rather than an asset? Soon
after the creation of FidoNet, nets were created for two reasons; One:
The network had become too big for one person to maintain the
nodelist. Two: to create a default routing. I think there is no
question that nets are still useful. But do we really need two levels
of hierarchy above that? I doubt it. There is no denying that the
nodelist contains a lot of dead wood and that is a sign that the
coordination hierarchy is not functioning properly, it seems to be
unable to keep the nodelist clean from dead wood. It might function
better if the hierarchy were trimmed down. Too many cooks spoil the
broth.

What level to do away with?
---------------------------

Last week the FTSC chairman wrote an article with a plea to remove the
zones. The article received no comments, so maybe the idea of dropping
the zones did not appeal to the FidoNet community. So let us look at
it from a less technical and more pragmatic point of view.

Regions were useful when FidoNet was big, POTS was its main transport
vehicle and international and long distance calls were very expensive.
Region boundaries served as a warning that a call was going to be
expensive. There was also the burden of maintaining the nodelist. When
Fidonet was big and countries had thousands of nodes divided into tens
of nets, it made sense to have region coordinators to collect the net
segments and send them on to the ZC.


Why do away with Regions?
-------------------------

The reasons to create them no longer apply. POTS/ISDN is no longer
FidoNet's main vehicle of transport. Widespread availability of the
InterNet has changed that. Cost of long distance and international
calls is no longer an issue and that situation appears to be
permanent. The nodelist has shrunk to such a small size that the extra
level of administration is no longer needed. On the contrary, all it
does is provide a delay in the processing of nodelist changes in
addition to being a potential source of errors.

Moreover failing region coordinators now appear to be a main cause of
the dead wood in the nodelist. It is a reasonable assumption that the
clean-up of R31 was long overdue. It took so long to clean it up
because there was no functioning RC left to ring the bell. It is also
a reasonable assumption that R31 is not the only one that is badly in
need of a clean-up. RC's fall asleep or go missing in action and the
segment degrades into dead wood.

How to go about it?
------------------

There is no technical problem with doing away with regions. To the
best of my knowledge, there is no software in use in FidoNet that
needs regions. We can just remove them form the nodelist and nothing
changes except that NC' must send their nodelist segments directly to
the ZC. A small change that brings the added value of ruthlessly
exposing all the dead nets.

It does not have to be done all at once. Regions can co-exist with
regionless nets. All that needs to be done is to move nets that are no
longer in a region to the section of the nodelist between the ZIN
section and the first Region entry in the nodelist.

Conclusion
----------

I realise that doing away with the regions will be asking a lot. It
will demand diplomacy from the ZCs to make some RC's get used to the
idea that they are superfluous. Also, some may not like the idea that
one level of appeal will be removed when dealing with complaints.
Well, let those think about the last time a complaint really solved
anything.

Removing the regions will require getting used to new ideas and some
may be somewhat less than enthousiastic. Some may prefer to not rock
the boat. Nevertheless I feel that reducing the coordinator overhead
will benefit the network in the long run and doing away with the
regions will be a good start.
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