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Annotation of 40BSD/cmd/berknet/BUGLIST, revision 1.1.1.1

1.1 root 1: Network Status January 11, 1980
2:
3: BUGS
4: ----
5: -- Various response messages are lost. This includes "fetching"
6: files when the file being retrieved never arrives. I suspect
7: this has something to do with unreliable delivery of error messages,
8: but this is not reliably reproducible.
9:
10: -- The net command will create files in the queue directories
11: without the corresponding control files ("dfa..." without "cfa...").
12: Unknown cause. They should be periodically removed.
13: (Perhaps caused by an error such as an invalid machine name.)
14:
15: -- The network makes no provision for errors in transit on intermediate
16: machines, such as "No more processes" or "File System Overflow".
17: While these occur only rarely, when they do, no message or
18: notification is sent to anyone.
19:
20: -- The network rendezvous protocol seems to occasionally get
21: in a state where a specific file is continually retransmitted
22: and never seems to get through. This happens when both the
23: host system and the network queues are overloaded, and thus
24: is very unpleasant to debug.
25:
26: -- The network daemons occasionally core dump. They should not.
27:
28:
29: SUGGESTIONS
30: -----------
31:
32: -- Performance Improvements:
33: A number of links now running at 1200 Baud could have their speeds
34: changed to 9600 Baud without deteriorating the system the
35: network runs on.
36: There are some high speed links (dmc-11's) which the network
37: could use for much better performance.
38: Likewise, the Bussiplexor could be used as a faster link.
39: This would allow us to increase the present 100,000 character
40: file length limit.
41: All the links would be faster if UNIX kernel drivers were used to avoid
42: going through the terminal character queues and interrupting
43: the CPU for every character.
44: At the end of every quarter, network transmission speed decreases and
45: the volume of traffic increases. The network becomes saturated
46: between two links and requests may arrive days later.
47: Increases in the link speed would reduce these seasonal delays
48: a great deal.
49:
50: -- Maintenance Improvements:
51: The network has become large enough to make re-compilation
52: of the source on all machines to become practically impossible.
53: The net command has compiled within it a routing table for each
54: remote machine (defined in config.h).
55: Adding a new machine to the network requires recompiling the
56: net command on ALL machines. The net command should read an
57: external text file to compute its data structures.
58: There is a program patchd, written by Bill Joy, which could
59: be used to patch the binary versions of the network
60: on like-systems, such as the Computer Center machines.
61: The network code should use the retrofit library for
62: non-Version 7 systems.
63:
64: -- Network mail needs to be generalized in a number of ways.
65: People with accounts on many machines want their mail forwarded
66: to one specific machine. Also, there are at least two other networks
67: now connected to the Berkeley network (the Bell Research net and
68: the Arpanet), and mail destined for those networks should be
69: routed to the appropriate gateway. Neither of these is particularly
70: difficult to implement, but system mail is an important facility
71: and the people in charge of the various machines on the network
72: disagree on how these features are to be added, especially concerning
73: issues of reliability and error reporting.
74:
75: -- The possibility of a number of small UNIX personal machines wanting
76: intermittent access to the network looms ahead. We should attempt
77: to organize the software to allow occasional use
78: by other UNIX machines, without tying down a port all the time.
79:
80: -- The A machine has a typesetter that can be used from the
81: Computer Center machines through the network. It would be nice
82: if this facility were available from non-Computer Center machines
83: to the A machine. Programs exist to provide this and have been used
84: extensively by Bill Joy and myself but the
85: Computer Center is reluctant to open up that facility for
86: security and reliability reasons.
87: We would like to arrange for Computer Center job numbers to
88: be stored in the password file on non-CC machines, to
89: allow people without accounts on A to have access to the
90: typesetter.
91:
92: -- Bob Fabry has suggested the "machine" be generalized to imply a
93: machine/account pair, e.g. -m caf would imply "caf" on Cory,
94: -m Cory would imply "fabry" on Cory.
95: Environments could provide this information.
96: It has also been suggested that the notion of a "default" machine
97: is too restrictive and that each type of command should have a
98: default machine, e.g. netlpr to A, net to B, netmail to C, etc.
99:
100: -- Colin has developed some data compression algorithms. On machines
101: which are normally CPU idle, his algorithms could be used to
102: compress data and speed up file transfer.
103: Each individual host could decide whether data should be compressed,
104: and each receiving machine would be able to handle both compressed
105: and uncompressed data.
106:
107: -- Files being retrieved, or fetched, are created zero-length
108: as the request is sent to the remote machine. An alternative
109: would be to put the message "File being transferred." in the file to
110: make things clearer.
111:
112: -- File modes should be preserved across the network. Currently
113: they are set to 0600 most of the time.
114:
115: -- It would be nice if the rcs facilities and commands on various
116: UNIX machines with rcs links were more accessible from machines
117: without an rcs link.
118:
119: -- The network was not expected to become as large as it has.
120: Not much thought was given to large networks.
121: The netq command only lists queues on the local machine,
122: but many times the user is waiting for long queues on intermediate
123: machines.
124: Likewise, once the request is forwarded to the nearest machine,
125: the netrm command will not let the originator remove the queue file.
126: Finally, a network status command telling people what the network
127: was doing would be very helpful.
128:
129: -- The file length restriction of 100,000 characters forces users to split
130: their files up into small pieces. The network should have a
131: way to do this split automatically.
132:
133: -- The underlying protocol is wasteful and/or confusing in a
134: number of ways:
135: * The request length should be in ASCII, not a long integer.
136: * Remove the extra 5 character string at the beginning of each
137: transmission.
138: * Compute a full checksum on the entire file in addition
139: to the checksum per packet now provided.
140: It is unlikely these will be changed since all the daemons
141: on the network machines would have to be changed at once.
142:
143: -- The netcp command should allow the user to default one of
144: the filenames to a directory, ala the cp command.
145:
146: -- File transfers, like remote mail, should be possible from
147: the Berkeley Network to the Arpanet and the Bell Research Net.
148: This is not difficult technically, but requires UNIX-like
149: stream interfaces to be written for the gateways.
150:
151: -- Currently the network files being transferred are
152: copied into /usr/spool... it would be nice for
153: large files to simply use a pointer to them.
154: (To save time and space).
155:
156: -- The scheduler the daemon uses is very simple.
157: It should have a way to age priorities and to "nice"
158: transfers, to be done after all normal ones are done.
159: Also, there are some network uses that are time-dependent.
160: It would be nice if certain queue files would disappear
161: at certain times, if for example, a remote machine were down,
162: given that they are no longer useful.

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