From Ned Freed: Re: ietf-nntp Comments on the November draft

Stan O. Barber sob at verio.net
Sat Nov 13 00:22:35 PST 1999


>From Ned Freed:

> Note: I'm reading this as a "black box" specification, deliberately not
> relying on knowledge of other implementations. Questions in this message
> should be read as if they contained "it should be easy to determine the
> answer to this question from the document but it isn't at the moment".

> Where I suggest changes, I am willing to assist on detailed wordsmithing if
> and when the concept is agreed.

> >        NNTP operates over any reliable data stream 8-bit-wide
> >        channel.
> [...]

> Can we add something about streaming/pipelining here ? In other words,
> though the protocol requires the client to send commands and the server to
> respond, the client should be able to send further commands without having
> to wait for the server to respond to the previous command (providing, of
> course, that it gets the overall protocol correct). This may seem obvious,
> but see RFC 1854 for why it isn't.

I have no problem and in fact am in favor of imposing such a requirement, as
long as the installed base of NNTP servers actually supports pipelining at
present. The reason RFC 1854 exists is that a significant fraction of SMTP
server software actually doesn't support pipelining, so it has to be done as an
optional extension.

If the installed base doesn't support pipelining then an extension would
probably be necessary to announce support.

                                Ned



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