[AG-TECH] AG Centralisation

[Terry Disz]

Don,

You are right on target. The vision is that communities can and should be
able to manage their own virtual spaces. We would like to see a large
community of venues servers, all connected as peers, much like the web is
today, so that we could easily navigate from one set of venues to another.
You, of course, would be able to control access to your spaces, but the
connection would be there so we could all visit one another.

Towards this end, we have released an early version of this kind of venue
server. It was announced on ag-tech a while ago, maybe the end of August.
We're in the car connected by cel phine now, so I can't easily browse for
the URL. We will look for it tonite and send it later., but you may be able
to find it in teh archives of ag-tech.

We;d like for others to try it out and provide feedback. Be aware, it is in
the early stages and will be changing.

Terry

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov [mailto:owner-ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov]On
> Behalf Of Don Morton
> Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 6:05 PM
> To: Sergeant A. G. Tech
> Subject: [AG-TECH] AG Centralisation
>
>
> All,
>
> Where does ANL see the future of AG "support" going?  A few of us in
> the western states have discussed the notion that we'd like to be
> doing more regional collaboration over the AG and, in the long
> term, "maybe" it would be beneficial to all if we looked at the prospects
> of creating our own venues, with our own machines, etc.  This is all
> VERY PRELIMINARY thinking, not at all thought out but, clearly
> ANL must have put some thought into how all these new nodes would
> be handled, scheduled, etc.
>
> - Does ANL "want" to be the centre of activity for this expanding AG?
> - Does ANL "want" to have some centralised control over AG activities?
> - Does ANL wonder how in heck it ever got into this support role and
>   want a way out???? :) :) :)
> - Does ANL have any interest in seeing regional groups set up their own
>   infrastructures, thus offloading some of the demand from them?
>
> I know there may be no real long-term game plan, and the answers may
> not at all be clear but, ultimately what I'm trying to understand is
> "if" some of us in the west decided to pursue a path towards semi self-
> reliance with the AG (have our own venues, bridges, etc.), would this
> be viewed as a "good" thing, or would it be discouraged?  I think "our"
> prime motivation in pursuing something like this would be to have some
> set of resources that we could dedicate to ourselves (i.e. we wouldn't
> have to share the toys all the time!!).  There are times when this
> would be advantageous, particularly if the AG starts to become saturated,
> but, of course, the management of a regional infrastructure is a bit
> intimidating.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Don
>
> --
>    Don Morton                     http://www.cs.umt.edu/u/morton/
>    Department of Computer Science       The University of Montana
>    Missoula, MT 59812 | Voice (406) 243-4975 | Fax (406) 243-5139
>