Message-Id: <shjePdaSTRk8EmnuQo@mrrl.lut.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 1994 18:54:49 +0100 (BST)
From: Martin Hamilton <martin@mrrl.lut.ac.uk>
To: uri@bunyip.com
Subject: Re: Selecting URL from "equal" sites
In-Reply-To: <199404271433.AA21700@oit.gatech.edu>
Excerpts from mail: 27-Apr-94 Re: Selecting URL from "equ.. Michael
Mealling@oit.gat (3392*)
> > For #2, the URC server could perhaps randomly order the URLs in the UYRC,
> > presuming that the 1st one will be chosen. I guess this is the fallback
> > strategy for #1, where the URLs that are "close" (all archie servers in
> > North America) are grouped and then returned in a random order. Then, a
> > geographic location might be useful.
> What might be usefull is a field for specifying either a) what
> geographic area your in or b) what 'set of networks' you consider yourself
> close too. For example, a URC for a document I mirror locally might be
> URN:bla
> URL:bla
> Close-Nets: 128.61.0.0,130.207.0.0,[Suranet networks],[etc..]
> Location-Geographic: US-East Cost
> That way we 'know' atleast what I as the mirror site considers close.
Hmm... I'm not keen on seeing network numbers in the URCs !
FWIW, xarchie has a neat technique that lets you sort the results of
archie searches according to weights placed on domain names, e.g. for me
things in "uk" are generally preferable to things in "au" or "jp".
Something like this would probably be a useful feature in any client
which is going to deal with URCs
URCs could record things like servers' time zones (i.e. displacement
from UTC) and lat/longs. This would undoubtedly(?) be a great help for
everyone trying to figure out which server to talk to next
Now, here's a question - what price IAFA templates in all of these
discussions? I'm not clear how URCs (at least
the "URT") relate to them. What does the panel think?
Cheerio,
Martin