ietf-nntp New wording on article numbers - draft 3

[Alan Barrett]

Chris Hall <chris.hall at turnpike.com> said:
> Let me see if I understand this correctly.  Are you saying that a
> collection of articles numbered, say, {12,13,14,15,16,17} at the master,
> could arrive at the slave in, say, the order {13,15,12,17,14,16} ?  But
> all earlier articles would arrive before this collection, and all later
> would arrive after -- so the out of order arrival is localised ?

Yes.

> If so, could the slave not avoid exposing the out of order arrival ?

Perhaps.

> That is, could the slave avoid serving an article (or its number) until
> all lower numbered articles have turned up ?  (Assuming you can
> guarantee that the articles will turn up, even if you cannot guarantee
> the order.)

You can't guarantee that they will all turn up, because some might get
canceled first.

--apb (Alan Barrett)