Subject: Re: ietf-nntp "Common NNTP Extensions" document updated

From: [email-masked] (Charles Lindsey)
Date: Tue, 2 Dec 1997 09:52:40 GMT

In local.nntp Vincent Archer <[email-masked]> wrote:

>Are all of your customers using NEWNEWS? How big is your server physical
>memory? Because, unless you have a server specifically designed to use
>NEWNEWS feeding (i.e. indexing on an article's date in addition to the
>message-id), any call to NEWNEWS will end up pulling the full history base
>in memory. If your server hasn't enough physical memory, the 2nd requester
>will reload the history from disk again.

That is nonsense. All you have to do is batch up the NEWNEWS requests that
come in over a period of, say, 1 minute (that would be 60 or so requests
on a busy site like Demon) and then make one pass over the history file
with all of them together. So no need to have the whole history file in
memory. And of course you only start at the point in the history file
corresponding to the earliest date in the batch - but there are lots of
simple hacks to arrange that.

You cannot ignore the fact that Demon, which must be about the largest
monolithic site on the whole Internet, actually _prefers_ NEWNEWS as the
normal way to provide feeds. If they can do it, then why not everyone
else?

But I would ask Clive whether Demon is prepared to release the code that
does this job. It is certainly time that INN caught up with reality.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing-------------------------
Email:     [email-masked]   Web:   http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Voice/Fax: +44 161 437 4506       Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
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From: "Clive D.W. Feather" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 1997 14:38:08 +0000 (GMT)

> does this job. It is certainly time that INN caught up with reality.

We don't use INN in this part of the system, and I doubt our code would be
of much use to anyone else.

I think the chief developer lurks on this list, and he may well comment
himself.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather     | Work:  <[email-masked]>  | Tel: +44 181 371 1138
Director of            | Home:  <[email-masked]> | Fax: +44 181 371 1037
  Software Development |
Demon Internet Ltd.    |

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From: "Clive D.W. Feather" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 1997 14:38:08 +0000 (GMT)