ietf-nntp New Chairs for NNTPEXT

[Mario Valente]

>> >  related to an idea of mine on the redesign of NNTP and Usenet: currently
>> >  the RFC states that for a SENDME or ARTICLE request, the *entire*
article
>> >  should be sent. I have this idea whereby only the headers would be sent
>> >  and stored and the body of the articles requested on demand. This would
>> >  lead to changes in both NNTP and probably in the format of the messages
>> >  themselves.
>> > 

>> Somone once mentioned to me that they consider one of the strengths of
>> NNTP/Usenet is that there is never just one copy of something. It makes
>> it alot harder for the Scientologists when they need to sue 10,000
>> admins to remove content.
>

>For example, if someone posts a very popular porn image from their small
>ISP, podunk.net, this machine could get slammed after distributing the
>header for article requests.  Certainly a caching model would be necessary
>and a hierarchical cache along the channels of news feeds would make most 
>sense, it seems to me.  In this case, the scenario you fear is not 

  This is precisely the idea.

  My upstream receives an article. Lets assume for now that its the full
 article. Since I'm on its newsfeeds file it sends me the article. BUT it only
 sends (and my server only stores) the headers.

  If no one (on my network) ever requests that article, I'll just have wasted 
 the bandwidth and disk for the headers.

  If someone requests the article, then my server detects that it doesnt have
 the body and requests it from the upstream server. This first person
 requesting the article will see some delay, but all the others that
request the
 same article will have it already stored on the local machine.

  Let me just add that I have done this already and it works and it doesnt
even
 need any NNTP extensions or commands or whatever. I just modified innd to
 send (upstream) and to store (downstream) just the headers; and then modified
 in.nnrpd to detect a missing body ( no lines matching Lines: header) and
issue
 a SENDME to the upstream server. It takes no more than 20 lines or so of
code.

  The NNTP protocol only has to be modified because it states that "the entire
 article should be sent" as a response to a SENDME or ARTICLE request.

  C U!

  -- Mario Valente