[ietf-nntp] :bytes metadata

Clive D.W. Feather clive at demon.net
Thu Dec 18 03:45:02 PST 2003


We currently say:

    It MUST equal the number of octets in the entire article - headers,
    body, and separating empty line - except that each CRLF pair MAY
    (but SHOULD NOT) be counted as a single octet.

Andrew from Supernews pointed out the following additional issues:

(1) In a cluster system, the number of octets in the article may vary
between cluster members (e.g. because folding happened differently or
because they have different Path: headers).

(2) Should dot-stuffing be counted?

(3) Should the final '.' CRLF be counted?

In other words, do we see :bytes as indicating the size of the article in
"canonical" form, or the number of octets that will come down the line in
response to ARTICLE?

My inclination is to say that the answers to (2) and (3) are "no"; the
value is a storage octet count rather than a wire octet count.

I'm not sure what to do about (1). I can think of four possible fixes:
(A) Say that the value applies to the current session and note that, while
    it SHOULD be constant across sessions, there are cases when it isn't.
(B) Require :bytes to be a maximum in cluster cases; is this practical?
(C) Allow it to be one, two, or three values:
        actual
        actual,max
        min,actual,max
(D) Have another metadata item reporting the potential problems with the
    value.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather  | Work:  <clive at demon.net>   | Tel:    +44 20 8495 6138
Internet Expert     | Home:  <clive at davros.org>  | *** NOTE CHANGE ***
Demon Internet      | WWW: http://www.davros.org | Fax:    +44 870 051 9937
Thus plc            |                            | Mobile: +44 7973 377646



More information about the ietf-nntp mailing list