Network Working Group Bob Bressler (BBN)
Request for Comments: 425 Dec 1972
NIC #13010
"But my NCP costs $500 a day..."
- Now that networking is becoming commonplace, people are beginning to measure
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- the cost of their network software and network use. A not insignificant
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- portion of this use turns out to be random prodding and poking of one system
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- by another. An example of this is the "Survey" mechanism that many sites are
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- constructing to see "who's up." Several systems have noted that this one
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- mechanism alone accounts for a log of their overhead, and is not chargeable to
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- any given user.
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- In response to this particular problem, MIT-DMCG and UCLA-NMC, who have both
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- been doing surveys for some time, have agreed upon a standard format for host
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- survey data and will make it available to the network community. They will be
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- joined by a third site, and will provide a standard socket to obtain this
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- information. The data will be a concise character stream so as to be both
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- human and machine readable.
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- The exact format of the data and the socket number will be forthcoming.
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- The intent of all this is for all other sites to stop surveying on their own
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- and get this data from one of the participating "Official Surveyors" either
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- prompted by a user's request or on a periodic basis, whatever they wish.
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- This should, itself, help considerably to eliminate a lot of the network
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- 'noise factor.' But, in addition, we should all try to be more aware of the
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- cost of this type of traffic and try to avoid repeated interactions with a
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- given Host without some expressed consent - be it an account number of some
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- specific experiment.
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- BB/ph
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