ietf-nntp Feedback on the 9/3 nntpext.

[Brian Hernacki]

Larry Osterman (Exchange) wrote:
> 
>         ----------
>         From:  Brian Hernacki [SMTP:bhern at netscape.com]
>         Sent:  Thursday, September 04, 1997 10:13 AM
>         To:  ietf-nntp at academ.com
>         Subject:  ietf-nntp Feedback on the 9/3 nntpext.
> 
>         Here is some feedback on the 9/3 draft:
> 
>         4.
>                 o The miminum timeout is required to be 10 minutes. I
> don't
>         think the RFC should specify a required minimum.
>         *******
>         I disagree - the RFC SHOULD specify a required minimum to allow
> clients to know how often they should poll the server to keep their
> sessions alive.  This is consistant with the what is done for POP3 and
> IMAP4.
> 
>         In particular, it's totally acceptable for a server to NOT
> implement timeouts, however for a server that DOES implement timeouts,
> clients need to know a minimum value below which they won't get > dinged.

For most servers, I suspect not implementing tineouts isn't an option.
Given that, I'd hate to admin a server where I was forced to allow idle
users to consume resources for 10 minutes. If we must have a timeout,
then we should make the minimum sufficiently low. I'd settle for three
minutes.



>         10.1
>                 o This section specifies that the server should use the
> "first
>         unused number" for arriving articles. We may want to clairfy
> this to say
>         "next sequential unused number".
> 
>         ****
>         If we change this wording, I'm concerned that clients may expect
> that article numbers are monotonicly increasing, instead of strictly
> increasing.  This becomes relevant if a message arrives, and is then
> canceled, a client may be confused when it sees a hole in the article
> id's.

But "first unused" could be read so as to include numbers available
lower than the high water mark.


--brian