We are having a little bit of a problem here when users execute the
netfind command within gopher in trying to find someone's address.
Netfind tends to examine every machine in the domain.  For example
"westlund calpoly"  would search every machine in calpoly.edu for
someone with my last name.

The problem comes about when our cluster of machines with shared file
systems comes into play.  We have 13 machines with 6700+ accounts which
gets pulverized as each machine gets asked for finger information for
every user.  The load this puts on the machines is outragious!

Since the users are scattered over the 13 sites, their .plan and
.project info is being searched via the shared file system for each
user, not once but 13 times.  Several members of the cluster can't
handle the load of that and logged in users as well.  Since a lot of
academic sites use shared filesystems of some kind to make management of
their systems and files easier to handle, this is not a unique event.

What can be done to prevent such searches without disabling finger for
local use when users are trying to hit on a single machine?  So far we
have experienced a couple of crashes and mutliple days when loads were
increased dramatically by this operation.

What relief can we get?  I know the service is useful, but the effect on
the target machines in a clustered environment is unacceptable.  Our
users have got to be able to get their work done, and netfind must
behave in a responsable manner.