ietf-nntp Message from Brian Kantor

[Stan O. Barber]

>I'm still waiting for answers to basic questions before I can write
>proposed text. Like "what the hell is the point of the MODE READER command
>*in terms of the protocol* ?".

The point is we were too stupid to realize that reading and transport
ought to take place on separate well-known sockets, so it's a kludge
to allow a connection to default to serving transport and be switched
to reader mode.  For some servers, it's a no-op.  Most readers send it
because INN needs it.

Eleven years down the pike, we'd probably be better off making
'reader' the default mode and set transport mode, except that would
break so much software that it might be better to just get another
pair of WKS allocated and transition to them.  Not that I think that
would succeed either.
        - Brian