See an unfamiliar term? Check the newsletter glossary.
News from:
M V C o m m u n i c a t i o n s , I n c .
P.O. Box 4963
Manchester, NH 03108-4963
(603) 429-2223
February, 1992
Note: text copies of all issues of the monthly newsletter can be
found on mv in the public archive; look in /news2/pub/mv/inews.
ClariNet
As mentioned in mv.announce, we're now carrying the ClariNet
newsgroups. ClariNet is distinct from mainstream usenet news
because rather than being a public discussion forum, it is a pro-
fessionally provided information source. It comprises over 150
newsgroups including stock quotes, UPI newswire stories, hot
news, industry news, feature columns (such as Dave Barry, Miss
Manners, and Mike Royko), and more. ClariNet offers a way to
bring an electronic newspaper to your terminal screen. Many sub-
scription packages are available at very reasonable terms from
ClariNet. To find out how to obtain ClariNet or arrange for a
free trial, send mail to 'info@clarinet.com' or call 1-800-USE-
NETS. More documentation on ClariNet can found in the file
/news2/pub/mv/info/clarinet on mv.
Dynafeed
Also from mv.announce: we're using a modified version of
Brad Templeton's "dynafeed" facility to provide subscriber-
oriented newsfeeds, and we've added some other mechanisms for
retrieval of newsfeed parameters. This means that you can con-
trol your own newsfeed directly, simply by making electronic mail
requests to the dynafeed server on mv. Using this facility, you
can adjust your newsfeed right down to the individual newsgroup
level.
Dynafeed works kind of like a newsreader on a site level.
For each site it keeps a list of newsgroups for which that site
has made a subscription decision: whether to accept or reject
each group in the list. This list is also used to record the top
article number that has been given to the site. Periodically, a
feeder program processes this list and feeds any articles that
are new, paying attention to desired distributions and eliminat-
ing duplications caused by crossposting.
You can change your site's subscription list by sending mail
to the dynafeed server (as 'setfeed@mv.mv.com') with a list of
subscription commands. These commands can subscribe or
MV Communications, Inc. 21 February 1992
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unsubscribe to individual groups or groups whose names match a
pattern that you give, or you can include new groups or distribu-
tions in your site's subscription list. (Note that these change
requests are password protected: in order to use the facility you
must first arrange a to set up a password for your site.)
For more information, fetch the file
/news2/pub/mv/news/newsfeed from mv, or send mail to
'helpfeed@mv.mv.com' and this file will be sent to you by return
mail.
Why Domains
You need a real, fully qualified domain name (sometimes
called an FQDN) to receive mail reliably from the Internet, but
many people may not know why this is so. Each fully qualified
domain name translates into a network address or the address of a
site that knows how to deliver mail to the destination. The
domain system implements a hierarchical system of namespace
management. Any user of computers knows some of the advantages
of hierarchical namespace: names are controlled within each name
space (e.g., a directory), and it's much easier to manage small
sets of names in small groups than in one mass.
Domain names on the Internet are managed through a distri-
buted system of nameservers. Each domain's namespace is managed
by two or more nameservers: one primary and one or more secon-
daries. (The secondaries load their information periodically
from the primary, and can provide name resolution if the primary
is unreachable.) Nameserver databases can contain many things,
but for the purposes of mail delivery to sites, the significant
entries are host addresses (network addresses), addresses of
sites that can forward to the destination site or domain, and
nameserver entries for subordinate domains.
When an Internet site wants to send mail to a site, it uses
this distributed nameservice to translate the destination site's
fully qualified domain name to an address (or a forwarder
address). A "root" nameserver is consulted to find the
nameserver within the specific top level domain. That nameserver
is consulted to translate the next lowest (more specific) name,
and so forth until a site resolution has occured. If an address
can not be resolved by an entry in the Internet nameserver
mechanism, the mail can not be delivered. There's nowhere to
send it!
The distributed nameserver system facilitates low-level
domain registration, as well. To register within a domain, it is
only necessary to update the name server for that domain. So to
add a new entry in a top level domain, e.g. "COM" or "EDU" or
"MIL", the entry must be made with the root nameservers. Those
new entries can only be domains themselves, and require confi-
guration of primary and secondary nameservers. This involves a
MV Communications, Inc. 21 February 1992
- 3 -
lot of overhead and bureaucracy, and can take some time. How-
ever, to add an entry within an existing domain, registration
only need occur within that domain. These new entries can often
be sites and not subdomains, and involve less overhead and can be
processed quicker. This is why, for example, registering a site
in the MV.COM domain only takes overnight, whereas registering a
new top-level domain can take a month or more.
Want anything?
If you have a special requirement, please let us know. We
are continuing to service FTP requests manually (yes, finding FTP
server software has proved not to be as easy as we thought); we
also can do special things such as providing mail-bounce facili-
ties if you have to go on vacation, generating paths files from
uucp maps, searching for software using 'archie', and so forth.
Misc. notes
A new phone line went in on January 16 and, we think, helped
to avoid some threatened contention for modems. We need to know,
though, if there's an unusual amount of trouble getting through,
as we can only intuit it from this end.
We're always appreciative of feedback, especially if you
have complaints, since that's the only way we can fix problems
that might arrive.
On that note: one site has reported difficulty with uucp
startup. The site can log in OK but often gets a timeout in one
of the handshaking sequences. It seems that this condition is
peculiar only to connections by this site, but we'd like to know
if there's evidence that it happens with others.
MV Communications, Inc. 21 February 1992