[NNTP] NNTP Compression

[Ade Lovett]

On Jan 09, 2010, at 13:52 , Julien ÉLIE wrote:
> As it was noted in the previous discussion, clients may want to
> use compression only for a few commands.  Wouldn't it be wise
> to have an NNTP command that can both activate and deactivate
> the compression?

From a server perspective, absolutely not.  Switching in and out of compression state is simply insane.  Those clients likely to be wanting to use both compressed and uncompressed streams simultaneously will almost certainly already be opening up multiple connections to the server endpoint, and thus can coordinate accordingly.

Quite frankly, compression for NNTP in this day an age is a solution looking for a problem.  The heavy downloading is coming off of already compressed data, and we're really not sitting at the end of 300baud teletypes for reading text.  Implement a 'ok, I want the session to be compressed/encrypted/whatever until it dies' option if you will, but switching back and forth?  Madness.  Not to mention, pointless.

-aDe