Re: distributed mailing list architecture

[pdh@best.com (Peter Hendrickson)]

At 12:11 PM 2/7/1997, Adam Back wrote:
>Igor Chudov <ichudov@algebra.com> writes:
>> I'd suggest a simplier solution: to connect each server with a couple,
>> or maybe three, other servers. This scheme is rather robust, does not
>> consume too much CPU time and bandwidth, and is easy to implement.

> I'm not sure what the architecture you are suggesting is, but this is
> what I suggest as the simplest to set up.

> Have one main majordomo.

> Have many mail-exploders.

> You subscribe to the main majordomo request address, and it forwards
> your subscription request to a random mail-exploder.

> You unsubscribe to the main majordomo request address, and it forwards
> your subscription to all the mail-exploders request addresses
> (unsubscribe traffic is low anyway, keeping track of who is subscribed
> where at the main major domo doesn't seem worth it).

> Each person who wishes to run an exploder is subscribed (manually) to
> the main majordomo.

> You submit articles to the main majordomo, and it sends copies of the
> articles to it's subscribers (the mail-exploders).

> The mail-exploders send mail to the address on their subscriber lists.

> (John Gilmore suggested this architecture, as a simpler alternative).

This mostly solves the performance problem, but performance was not the
only choke point.  It is important to have many machines which accept
posts and which send them to other machines.

(Also, many interconnections means that few messages have to go through
more than two machines which should make message distribution
extraordinarily fast and highly redundant.  Standing in the way of
the cypherpunks list will be like standing in the way of the wind.)

I suggest we consider the problem of subscriptions to be independent
of the problem of posting and distributing messages.

Some machine owners may wish to pool subscription activities.  The
fast and easy approach is to have an official cypherpunks subscription
page which lists all of the mail servers which will accept new
subscribers.  (The person who maintains this page would ideally not
be somebody running a mail server.)  The interested person looks
at the page and then picks a majordomo to subscribe to.

It seems beneficial to me from a technical and social standpoint to
have a web of relationships between list managers and subscribers.
If as a subscriber you have some sort of problem (technical or social),
it will work better if there is just one person to talk to rather than
a loose network of volunteers.

Peter