ietf-nntp Verb: AVAILABLE returns available news servers.

[Jack Hudler]

I've been pondering the problem of distributed News Server running
in regional areas. I noticed some large ISP's give out different
news servers names/IP's to a block of customers based on regional
location. This seems to me a clumsy way and with customer turnover
a potential for this primitive attempt at load balancing to become 
lopsided.

What I would like to propose is this:

AVAILABLE
	
	Returns a list of server IP# or names.
	This refers to other NNTP Servers that is available to use.
	If the IP of the current server is not in list, this could
	mean this server is too loaded and you should use one of the
	available server in the list or it could mean these servers
	are closest to your location (i.e., hop distance which the
	reader could determine the best one).
	

		nnn Ok servers to follow. Terminates with <CR-LF>.<CR-LF>
		500 Command not understood


This has implications mainly for readers, but I see no reason why
feed servers cannot use this. The command 'MODE READER' could
be use to specify the type of server to use (i.e., server for feeds
or readers).
I haven't fully thought this through, I know it has several problems.
One of which is some readers reliance on article numbers. But I suspect
any reader which would this, would rely solely on Message-ID's.
Another is how this would be configured. How does the master server know 
of the others? Does the master keep close tabs on slave servers load 
percentage? Or does it care? 

Anyway, I though I would throw this out to see if anyone thought this
would make good discussion fodder. :-)
I am curious, how do most ISP's handle this? Surely they can have all 
the users using one server.

-Jack Hudler