Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site ncr-sd.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!hao!hplabs!sdcrdcf!sdcsvax!sdcc3!sdcc6!ncr-sd!greg
From: greg@ncr-sd.UUCP (Greg Noel)
Newsgroups: net.news.b
Subject: Re: ihave/sendme and 2.10.3
Message-ID: <300@ncr-sd.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 26-Sep-85 23:24:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: ncr-sd.300
Posted: Thu Sep 26 23:24:27 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 3-Oct-85 04:27:15 EDT
References: <190@peregrine.UUCP>
Reply-To: greg@ncr-sd.UUCP (Greg Noel)
Organization: NCR Corporation, Torrey Pines
Lines: 34
In article <190@peregrine.UUCP> mike@peregrine.UUCP (Mike Wexler) writes:
> I have looked at the code for netnews 2.10.2 and it looks like it would
>be pretty easy to modify it so that ihave and sendme would work as follows:
I have considered this as well, but haven't had the time to look at it at all.
My thought is that inews should create the file in /usr/spool/batch to look like
"path/suffix/of/file" since inews has all that information
when it is making the entry. This file should be sent to the remote inews as
a control message. (To be sure of compatibility, the control names should be
changed; my name for this message is "douwant" and the reply an "iwant".) The
critical points are that the remote inews should take the article-id and decide
if the article is wanted and just reply with the path/suffix/of/file which is
all that is needed for the local inews to deliver the file. You don't want the
full path name, both to save on transmission costs and to avoid a possible
security hole that would occur if you could ask inews to send you an arbitrary
file. There is also the issue of how to specify what program(s) should be
run to deliver the files -- compression and batching are the two most obvious
things that would need to be known.
I also like the general idea of a "douhave" control sequence, but I think that
will require a \lot/ of careful thought to be sure that every desirable request
was possible and that undesirable requests were \not/ possible.
I'm sure that many people will tell you that USENET is indeed redundant -- not
all sites are like yours with only one feed. We have two full feeds and some
partial feeds; well-connected backbone sites have many more. However, your
point that it would be much better if sites could be cheaply interconnected
is a valid one; in fact, I'd bet that if one percent of the current telephone
costs for transmission of duplicated articles were applied to doing something
like this, it would be accomplished in a day..... Not only that, it would make
Chuqui's cost estimates for the breakpoint between newsgroups and mailing lists
a \lot/ closer to reality.
--
-- Greg Noel, NCR Rancho Bernardo Greg@ncr-sd.UUCP or Greg@nosc.ARPA