[NTLUG:Discuss] NNTP/News access

[MadHat]

On Tue, 2003-03-11 at 11:09, Jack Snodgrass wrote:
> > Sig/noise is not as much an issues on these private servers, but I do
> > prefer the push technology instead of pull technology.  Just how I like
> > things.  If there is enough request I can see about getting the
> > Mail<->News working in Mailman.
> 
> 
> I vote for News. I'm an IMAP and News fan. You can pull the
> headers ( generally a small percentage of the message ) and
> then pull the body if your intersested in the message.
> 

Right, but that does not change the size of the message or time it takes
to deliver it when requested.

> You say that you like 'push technology' ( old and slow ) and
> then say that you don't like pushing HTML and off topic
> threads. If you used pull technology, you only pull what
> interests you and don't get all of the non-interesting
> stuff pushed down to you.
> 
> You can also choose to only pull small items (5K for example )
> and ignore the large items. With 'push', you push it all... and then
> complain that it's too big.

I am asking people to stay on topic and follow what everyone agreed on
as the list guidelines (which would still apply in the newsgroups as
well).  People have their own reasons for not wanting HTML or large
messages, some people it is a bandwidth issue, and if we take into
consideration that the server still has to receive the messages, and
someone is paying for that bandwidth, we still have issues with the size
of things.

What I was saying is that _I__personally_ like mail being delivered to
_my_ mailbox.

Every technology is old now, and slow is based on your connection and
the speed of the sender as well as the process load of each machine as
well as network latencies out of our control.  

Usenix is not new and not any faster than mail, protocol wise.  News
groups have to be pushed from server to server instead of it being
delivered to me it has to be replicated to a bunch of servers and is a
_major_ bandwidth hog as far as the big picture.  

Take this into consideration:
UseNet RFC 850       1983
NNTP   RFC 977       1986
POP    RFC 1081      1984
IMAP   RFC 1064      1988
SMTP   RFC 821       1982
All of which reference back through a few RFCs to RFC 561 from 1973,
that is "Standardizing Network Mail Headers" or RFC 524, from 1973 as
well, on the "MP", the Mail Protocol, which was based on FTP.

And you still have to have SMTP to have IMAP or POP.  ;)

Point is none of this is even close to being new ideas, protocols or
technologies and none of it is fast or slow based on the protocol used.

Point to point, to read the same messages, from the same sender on the
same end machine, the amount of bits different from one protocol to the
next is not that much and inconsequential.


Again, if enough people want, I will get the news server running with
the Mail<->NNTP mailman interface working.


-- 
MadHat at Unspecific.com
`But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
`Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here...'
   -- Lewis Carroll - _Alice's_Adventures_in_Wonderland_