Is this normal...
 

I was just taking a look at my client and noticed something odd. This assignment
08:33:49 Received assignment (Texas 2_713M_2 920022-920200)...
was followed by
09:31:51 Received assignment (Texas 2_713M_2 251820-251999)...
In the past, the assignments (as far as I have noticed) have increased monotonically. Is this expected?

BTW, on the forum vs. email list topic, I far prefer the forum since it provides a threaded, searchable archive. Although that could be added to the mailing list. If the forum is going to be kept, a link to it should be added to the nfsnet.org front page.

Greg

The ranges handed out jump around occasionally. I'm not sure why (reassigning ranges that never were returned?)

Re: Is this normal...
 

[quote="frmky"]BTW, on the forum vs. email list topic, I far prefer the forum since it provides a threaded, searchable archive. Although that could be added to the mailing list. If the forum is going to be kept, a link to it should be added to the nfsnet.org front page.[/quote]

Greg,
The messages on the nfsnet mailing lists are also archived. The archives are available from majordomo@nfsnet.org. I agree that they are not presently in a searchable form, but as you note, that feature could be added rather easily. I will also note that the archive of this forum is not on any of the nfsnet.org servers and that loss of that control has to be considered a negative.

From the user's point of view, the forum is extremely inconvenient. I must manually query to determine if there is anything of interest in this forum and I must have Internet access in order to browse the content.
I participate in a number of different activities and checking a website for each of them would be a major PITA. With mailing lists, all of the messages from each of the projects are automatically downloaded to my computer while I am connected to the internet and without any manual effort on my part. And I can read those messages at any time, even while I am off line, since I have them on my own hard disk. My mail client is far more friendly in terms of its ability to allow me to view messages and enter replies.

Another disadvantage of the forum is that it causes a division of the participants. Rather than having everyone aware of what's going on, only a few get the message.

I didn't realize that the archives were even available! Having to send commands via email to majordomo, though, is quite inconvenient. It'd be great if they could be posted on the nfsnet.org site. Perhaps something like that of the Number Theory mailing list at [url]http://listserv.nodak.edu/archives/nmbrthry.html[/url] or d.net's archive at [url]http://lists.distributed.net/pipermail/rc5/[/url] would be possible?

Greg