Re: gateways

[Eric Ray <EJRAY -at- OSUVM1 -dot- BITNET>]

On Mon, 15 Mar 1993 15:08:00 EST Michele Berkes 615-576-2352 said:
>As I've mentioned before, I'm new to all this networking business. What's a
>gateway? What are the benefits? Could someone post a synopsis for those of us
>who don't know enough to know whether we have any objections?

>Michele Berkes
>berkesm -at- a1 -dot- osti -dot- gov

Network news (or netnews, or usenet) is sort of like a bulletin
board. Instead of subscribing to a list, you read the files off
the network news reader provided by your system. Some systems
don't offer network news.

Network news offers the advantage that you go to the information
rather than it flooding into your e-mail box.

The disadvantage is that the information is somewhat less accessible,
for the same reason.

System administrators like network news because it is less
of a resource hog than lists because only one copy of any message has
to be kept, rather than one for every subscriber's mailbox.

In my opinion (I won't even bother claiming to be humble about it),
everyone should be able to access techwr-l and they should be able to
do it in their preferred way. Network news gateways copy everything
from the techwr-l list into network news, and copy everything posted
to the network news group back into techwr-l, so people who have only
network news or only e-mail access can still access techwr-l and
participate in discussions.

All a gateway would do is allow more people to access the list. It
would have no other effects for anyone on the list.

I would welcome any additions, corrections, or clarification
to the above. I personally prefer lists, but I want techwr-l
to be as widely accessible as possible.

Eric
ejray -at- okway -dot- okstate -dot- edu