[116] in Information Retrieval
Remote access thoughts
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (ganderso@Athena.MIT.EDU)
Mon Nov 9 09:40:35 1992
From: ganderso@Athena.MIT.EDU
To: dlicc@Athena.MIT.EDU, elibdev@Athena.MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 92 09:39:44 EST
This information on the MELVYL experience of outside users is
interesting.
Greg
------- Forwarded Message
Date: Fri, 06 Nov 92 14:10:15 -0800
From: "Genevieve Engel" <GENOL%UCCMVSA.BITNET@lists.psi.com>
To: com-priv@psi.com
Subject: Re: Will success (exposure)
Daniel Dern asks:
> In particular, I'm wondering about the real-time sites and applications,
> like the TMC WAIS server, the Gopher servers, the public-access library
> catalogs... many of which were started originally to serve a specific
> community who was funding it. And the links that connect them, and
> the people who care'n'feed them.
The MELVYL system has been showing up fairly regularly in Internet
guides and training sessions for a while now, so I took a look at
our stats. In a recent week about 12% of our sessions were from
users not known to be UC-affiliated. This sounds like a lot but
includes dialup hosts on campuses, new on-campus terminal servers,
etc., so that the actual proportion of truly non-UC use is much
smaller. A few minutes ago there were a few dozen sessions coming
in over telnet from hosts not already tabled as UC; they turned out
to be about 81% hosts in UC domains, 7% out-of-state .edu, 5%
in-state .edu, and 3% in-state .com (we're talking about a pretty
small sample though, so even those pretty low percentages of outside
use may be exaggerated; also, these are more or less percentages of
that 12% mentioned above, not percentages of all system use).
Obviously as a state university we need to keep access available to
in-state users (taxpayers) but we would not want to shut down
general public access, not least because then, how could we justify
the links we provide for our own users to reach other public-access
systems?
Beyond the system load, though, support for outside users is an
increasing demand, especially as those users are more likely to
ask less-standard questions such as ...
> Question Two: Who ya gonna call? As many of us write about the Internet,
> we need relatively succinct, impartial people/organizations/phone#s
> to list. OK, there's the NNSC for now. What about all the people who
> want individual end-user accounts? Who is there whose job it is to
> take these calls?
It's all our jobs I guess -- we get them, which is a big reason
why I started writing up a directory of individual-access sites.
We'll be seeing lots of printed directories of sites. Obsolescent,
yes, but accessible at the local bookstore to anyone who doesn't
yet have any Internet access at all.
Genevieve Engel genol@uccmvsa.bitnet
MELVYL System User Services gen@magnum.ucop.edu
University of California (510) 987-0566
"Real Net-heads resented every penny not spent on information."
-- Bruce Sterling, "Green Days in Brunei"
------- End of Forwarded Message
