ietf-nntp MODE STREAM (was: draft-ietf-nntpext-streaming-00.txt)

[Jeffrey M. Vinocur]

On Fri, 6 Jun 2003, Russ Allbery wrote:

> MODE STREAM can be pipelined (although you don't want to pipeline into
> CHECK commands, obviously).

I thought about this, but there seems to be very little benefit (who uses
anything else immediately following MODE STREAM?) and it was hard to
specify, and I imagine it would clutter up implementations as well.  
Also, it's a bit inconsistent that MODE READER is blocking but MODE STREAM
might not be.


> Yes, in the long term, I think.  I think MODE STREAM is more of a legacy
> thing, although it's going to be an important one for a while.  Right now,
> you have to send MODE STREAM before you send any of the streaming commands
> and people put the check for whether you want to allow streaming in the
> MODE STREAM command, but I don't see any need to continue that going
> forward.  The command does need to be supported for backward compatibility
> (since otherwise people won't stream at all), but I don't see any reason
> for new servers not to start supporting CHECK and TAKETHIS for those
> clients that they allow streaming before a MODE STREAM.
> 
> We may want to say something about all that.

I'm not clear on what the desired behavior of a compliant client should 
be.  Check LIST EXTENSIONS first, and fall back to MODE STREAM?  Just try 
CHECK and hope it works?


-- 
Jeffrey M. Vinocur
jeff at litech.org