ietf-nntp "Common NNTP Extensions" document updated

[Jeff Garzik]

Stan Barber wrote:
> The new draft is at this URL:
>         ftp://ftp.academ.com/pub/nntp/ietf/nntp-common-practices.txt

Comments since I won't be at the meeting:

Under the 'implementation issues' section, you should definitely add a
section describing the disabling of the NEWNEWS command on many of the
current news systems.  On most systems, the NEWNEWS command imposes
serious performance penalties, and running just a few NEWNEWS commands
can easily bring a carefully-tuned system to its knees.

NEWNEWS is disabled by default in INN 1.5.1 and later, and perhaps
earlier versions as well.  It may be disabled in INN 1.4, but I couldn't
find it on FTP sites to verify my guess.  :)  Since NEWNEWS is disabled
on many of the Internet's client reader systems, the RFC should mention
that this command cannot be counted on to be present.

I'm not sure if HighWind's Typhoon supports NEWNEWS or not.

Can NEWNEWS be considered deprecated?  There are far better ways of
determining the availability of new news within the current RFC 977
protocol, not to mention the command NNTP extensions XHDR (to retrieve
just the msg ids) or XOVER.


Regarding the nntp reference implementation:

Can you package it such that the tarball is extracted into its own
"nntp.1.5.12.2" directory.  Doing so will make it more admin-friendly.
-- 
Jeff Garzik			    Typhoon, Cyclone, Diablo, and INN
Spinne USENET News Service	        Fast and efficient news feeds
http://www.spinne.com/usenet/	           News tuning and consulting