ietf-nntp Virtual hosts in NNTP servers

[Russ Allbery]

Clive D W Feather <clive at demon.net> writes:

> Nothing stops you defining your own extension, but is anyone going to
> use it? I've never heard of anyone needing this before, which argues
> it's likely to be not that popular.

I've definitely seen the need before.  It's a not-uncommon INN feature
request.  Most people who need it are using or can use authentication,
though, and therefore just use Ken's recommended solution.

One could, as you mention, define a new extension for this, but honestly
it would be easier to change the clients to use SASL ANON to authenticate
and give a domain than it would be to add yet a new command, once SASL is
the way that authentication is done for news.  And in the interim, one
could pretty easily modify the clients to send USER/PASS using AUTHINFO,
more easily than modify them to send a new command.

(This is assuming SASL ANON ends up supporting domains, though, which
isn't all that clear just at the moment as I understand the current
discussion on the SASL list.)

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>