National Dialnet

["ARTIC::AREAPU" <areapu%artic.decnet@ari-hq1.arpa>]

Greetings. As part of a major movement within the National Symbolics
Users' Group, we are updating our worldwide Users Group Dialnet
Registry. Dialnet is a facility whereby Symbolics' users can use the
Mailer system to communicate with other users via telephone and modem.

Dialnet as a means of exchanging information and experiences will be the
focus of activity among members of the National Group on a daily basis.
Dialnet is compatible with the Internet domain system, allowing both
sites connected directly to ARPAnet and those without direct access to
ARPA to use one addressing scheme for both networks.

Symbolics has promised strong support of the effort and has already
allocated some of the resources that will be required.  For the
near-term, we are in the midst of an experiment to bring Dialnet up with
a SLUG mailing list, and we hope to extend the facility to the entire
community as soon as possible thereafter.

We expect that Dialnet will have mail relays to and from the existing
SLUG ARPA list, for users who prefer or can only communicate via the
ARPA network. We hope to expand considerably the dissemination of
information via e-mail for Symbolics' users. We expect e-mail to be
useful for bug reports to Symbolics and announcements by Symbolics, as
well as the technical discussions which current subscribers to the
ARPA SLUG list are familiar with. It is however fundamentally a means
for users to talk with each other directly, to exchange information of
direct interest to them as individuals. The existence of the Dialnet
facility will allow many more users to be reached, and the combination
with ARPAnet should allow all users on e-mail to communicate with all
others.

Our present plan will require sites to dial into Symbolics to receive
mail, and thus the cost of the phone calls will be borne by each site.
To help this somewhat, Symbolics has offered to provide a mid-term
capability for dial-in both in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Chatsworth,
California, so the distances will be shortened somewhat. The feature of
deferred-receipt works well for automating the process of capturing
mail. In the long-term we hope to modify this so that a small number of
local groups each will receive a single call from Symbolics, which will
then be re-distributed locally via local phone calls.

At all times we will keep our international users in mind so that they
too can benefit from the facility.

For those without any means of e-mail, the material which is important
over time (such as bug reports, fixes, news) will be reproduced in a
Newsletter of the National Group (as far as appropriate and practical).
Plans for this are also in progress and we hope to have a first issue
mailed to all users in early November.

Mark Grover of the Capital Area Group has kindly agreed to continue
collecting the entries and integrate them into a file called
SYS:SITE:users-group-dialnet-registry.lisp.  (This file should be listed
in your sys:site;launch-domain-server.text file so the Domain Server
will handle it automatically.) 

We therefore request that any sites who wish to be active on Dialnet
submit their registry entry according to the format and example given
below.  Mark will be happy to send the complete registry via Dialnet
once his site is in contact with yours electronically. Thereafter we
will make updates available periodically.

Many sites are in the Dialnet registry, and many more are in the
process of establishing Dialnet services.  Sites presently in the
registry include: 

Advanced Decision Systems		Arthur Andersen & Co.
Arthur D. Little			US Army Artificial Intelligence Center 
Bitstream				Defence Research Establishment Atlantic
US Army Engineering Topographic Labs	Intellicorp
McDonnell Douglas			NASA, Kennedy Space Center
National Bureau of Standards		PANGARO Incorporated
PAR Government Systems
Symbolics: Austin, Cambridge, Chicago, Central Florida, London, and Toronto
	[Note that Symbolics has a new name zone system separate from
	the Dialnet.Symbolics.Com domain.  For example, Symbolics' Chicago
	machine is Capone.SChi.Symbolics.Com]

Several other sites are known to exist but have not registered with Mark
Grover for addition to the Users Group Dialnet Registry.  You must be
willing to offer some telephone number, but there is no requirement that
your machine answer calls from other sites.  (However, this restriction
means that you cannot exchange mail with other sites which refuse
incoming calls).  Perhaps at sometime a private relay service will be
made available through SCRC's Dialnet machine.

We look forward to providing timely and important information via this
means and hope that the community of Users will support the effort.
Please contact me at any time to discuss the strategy and to contribute
to it.

Paul Pangaro
President, National Symbolics LISP Users' Group
Phone:   202-547-7775
Dialnet: pan@athena.pangaro.dialnet.symbolics.com
ARPAnet: AREAPU@ari-hq1.arpa


****************************************************************
Here is the format for submissions to Dialnet:

;;; Name of Company. Full US Mail address.
;;; Point of contact: Name, phone number, ARPA address [if any]. Time zone.
;;; Postmaster's address: Dialnet address.
;;; Other useful information, such as up time and status, notations.
(:HOST "Site-machine" :ADDRESS "machine_phone_number")
(:DOMAIN "Site.dialnet.symbolics.com" :HOST "Site-machine")

For example (for a non-Internet site):

;;; PANGARO Incorporated; 800 3rd Street, Washington DC, 20002, USA.
;;; Point of contact: Paul Pangaro  202-547-7775  (AREAPU@ARI-HQ1.ARPA)
;;;		      Eastern time.
;;; Postmaster's address: PAN@Athena.Pangaro.Dialnet.Symbolics.Com
;;; We generally run 24 hours/day, 7 days a week.
;;; We accept incoming calls and probe SCRC daily.
(:HOST "Pangaro-Athena" :ADDRESS "12025474179")
(:DOMAIN "Pangaro.DialNet.Symbolics.Com" :HOST "Pangaro-Athena")

For an Internet site:

;;; Advanced Decision Systems; 1500 Wilson Blvd #512; Arlington, VA 22209
;;; (formerly AI&DS)
;;; Mark D. Grover: (703) 243-1611 (also Grover@ADS.ARPA) Eastern time
;;; Note: the ADS-DC.COM domain is under application but is not yet
;;; registered with the NIC.  For ARPA mail send to Grover@ADS.ARPA
;;; Postmaster's address: Grover@Potomac.ADS-DC.Com
;;; We run 24 hours/day, 7 days a week.
;;; We accept incoming calls and probe SCRC twice a day.
(:HOST "AIDS-DC-Monticello" :ADDRESS "17032439464")
(:DOMAIN "ADS-DC.Com" :HOST "AIDS-DC-Monticello")

Note that Internet sites comment out other Internet sites from their
Dialnet directories.  However, inclusion of these entries allows
non-Internet sites to contact Internet sites who are on Dialnet.

Once your submission is received, it will be integrated into the
registry and you will be sent, via Dialnet of course, the latest
registry with the details of the SLUG machine at Symbolics.

**************************************************************** Here
follows a very brief guide for integrating into SLUG Dialnet. It is not
complete and is intended for sites already somewhat knowledgable in
using the Mailer and IP Domain Server.  Other users should pay
particular attention to the Genera 7.1 Patch Notes sections:  2.16
"Changes to Networks in Genera 7.1" and 4.5 "Understanding the Internet
Domain Names System". This cannot be stressed strongly enough.
It is the key to installing dialnet correctly. We hope to provide
individual help for sites wanting to use the facility immediately, while
more extensive documentation is prepared.

Each site will have mail stored on the Symbolics mail host under the
name of SLUG@mail-machine-server.site-name.dialnet.symbolics.com (for
non-Internet sites; analogus names for Internet sites). This address
will be taken from your submissions to the users-group-registry, as per
the above format. 

In addition each site should place the following form in the file
:>Mail>Options>Mailboxes.text at their site:

(define-local slug (list local-user-name-1 local-user-name-2...
	":>mail>archive>slug.text"))

You can send mail to slug@East.SLUG.dialnet.symbolics.com to reach the
entire list. Any such mail will be forwarded by your host to the users
in the list in the above form, e.g.,
local-user-name-1,local-user-name-2. Also, the file
:>mail>archive>slug.text will store all messages for later recovery;
including it in the above form is optional.

You can also send mail to individual(s), for example to
pan%athena.pangaro.dialnet.symbolics.com@East.SLUG.dialnet.symbolics.com.

In your file :>Mail>Static>Options.lisp, the following will probe 3
times per day at the appointed times.

(setf mailer:deferred-receipt-hosts '("East.SLUG.dialnet.symbolics.com"))
(setf mailer:deferred-receipt-times '("12:00pm" "5:30pm" "11:30pm"))

Other customizations and details can be found in the Symbolics
documenation. Please report any difficulties with dialnet to
customer-reports@riverside.scrc.symbolics.com; the only means for
Symbolics experts on these issues to be assigned the task of fixing bugs
and developing features is through our agitation.

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