RFC 514 (rfc514) - Page 1 of 4


Network make-work



Alternative Format: Original Text Document



Network Working Group                                      W. Kantrowitz
Request for Comments: 514                                        LL TX-2
NIC: 16445                                                   5 June 1973
Updates: RFC 459


                           NETWORK MAKE-WORK


   The ARPA Network seems to have developed the proclivity of dragging
   compulsive collectors and organizers out of the woodwork and placing
   them in the forefront to annoy everybody.

   Recent occurrences have been:

   1. A set of charts on characteristics of the hosts.  The orientation
      seems to have been:  If you can come up with names for the
      horizontal and vertical nodes and if it has to do with the hosts,
      make a chart out of it.  This collection of charts goes under the
      euphemism "ARPA Network handbook".  Information on a host is
      scattered over all the pages which is a questionable organizing
      scheme.  Additionally, since the charts contain much of what is
      already in the Resource Notebook, we now have the delightful task
      of maintaining two documents when changes are necessary.

   2. A telephone call asking for hourly loads on the TX-2 computer for
      every hour of the months April and May.  One can easily imagine
      all this information being keypunched in some computer (on the
      network, of course) and then lovely bar graphs, curves, plots,
      etc., being generated.  Probably in triplicate.

   3. A mailbox message about a "central software repository" and a
      personnel file. (Copy of the message is attached).  This was just
      too much and is the immediate precursor of this RFC.

   My first reaction to the "central software repository" was that this
   has got to be some kind of prank.  But when the second message
   (identical to the first) arrived an hour later and when I learned
   that others had also received it, I reluctantly accepted its
   legitimacy.  Actually, sending the message in duplicate fits in very
   nicely with the general bureaucratic syndrome evidenced by the
   contents of the message.

   This RFC addresses itself merely to the idea of listings of every
   program.  That does not mean that I think that the rest of the
   request is better, just that I don't have the time to write a
   treatise on the general subject.  It should be noted (if not obvious)
   that what follows is being written with almost unbearable restraint.



Kantrowitz