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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!news.unimelb.EDU.AU!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!serv.hinet.net!news.uoregon.edu!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!uchinews!cbgw2.att.com!cbgw3.att.com!news.PBI.net!ns2.mainstreet.net!news.us.world.net!news.aus.world.net!not-for-mail From: proff@suburbia.net (Julian Assange) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Have you set up a News server? Date: 22 May 1996 20:04:44 GMT Organization: AUSNet Services pty. ltd. Lines: 96 Message-ID: <832795435.759036@suburbia.net> References: <4n11cv$k088_002@ca.mdis.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.142.2.24 X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 BETA-950824-color PL0] Cache-Post-Path: suburbia.net!localhost Preston L. Bannister (pbannister@ca.mdis.com) wrote: : I'm trying to set up a News server. : : We have perhaps a half-dozen people that might read News regularly, and about : 30 people who would have access to News. What you need is: NNTPCACHE 0.87.6UL (BETA #2) (nntpcache-users@suburbia.net) This is a BETA SNAPSHOT release! It has only been tested with a few combinations of hardware/OS/servers/newsreaders. There are probably all sorts of combinations of the above out there that nntpcache will fail to work with miserably. There is also undoubtably a slew of nasty bugs we have yet to find that make ear weavils look nice. Caveat Empor! Theory of operation: nntpcache executes on the localhost pretending to be an NNRP news reading server. In fact, what it does is pass certain NNTP commands through to real (remote and possibly local) news-servers based on various pattern matching rules. nntpcache then takes the output from those servers and caches & indexes it in funky ways (much specific case magic goes into this). The next time such information is asked for, or other information which can be logically inferred from the previously collated information, it is sent directly from the cache, without consulting the remote servers. nntpcache tries very hard to look like nnrpd, so there shouldn't be any reason why the remote servers that nntpcache is directed to feed from can not be other nntpcache's themselves, meaning that the final active/newsgroup (etc) files that nntpcache dishes out to you may or may not bare much resemblance to any one of the inn (etc) servers that information ultimately originated from. After nntpcached has run for a few days of even moderate use, it saves IMMENSE amounts of bandwidth (we were quite astounded to see just how much bandwidth news uses). On our network, news accounted for more IP traffic than everything else combined! With nntpcache, startup times for newsreaders become limited only by the speed of your internal network (or the loopback device if the readers are run on the same machine as nntpcached - there no reason you can not run several nntpcached's on different machines - indeed with larger sites, this practice is recommended. Even ethernets can become clogged with news traffic). nntpcache can transparently merge local newsgroups & remote feeds (usually handled by inn) with remote NNRPD and nntpcache servers to create mind-bogglingly large "virtual" newsfeeds, without having to negotiate for the actual feeds or allocating anything like bandwidth normally required. nntpcache can also act selectively as an intelligent firewall NNTP application proxy and supports full RFC931/ident & source address and newsgroup access controls with quite a reasonable degree of granularity. Presently nntpcache caches the active, active.times, newsgroups and overview.fmt files, article, head, body, group, listgroup and xover commands. nntpcache cross-posts seeds its cache and also maintains a database of message-id's. Tested on: Linux 1.3.100 and FreeBSD2.2-current, with the remote servers all running inn/NNRPD or nntpcached 0.87.5UL. Patches for other configurations are welcome. Authors: Julian Assange (proff@suburbia.net) Luke Bowker (puke@suburbia.net) Archive: ftp://ftp.suburbia.net/pub/nntpcache/nntpcache.tgz Mailinglist: Send a message with "Subject: subscribe" to: nntpcache-users-request@suburbia.net -- "Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies, The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C.S. Lewis, _God in the Dock_ +---------------------+--------------------+----------------------------------+ |Julian Assange RSO | PO Box 2031 BARKER | Secret Analytic Guy Union | |proff@suburbia.net | VIC 3122 AUSTRALIA | finger for PGP key hash ID = | |proff@gnu.ai.mit.edu | FAX +61-3-98199066 | 0619737CCC143F6DEA73E27378933690 | +---------------------+--------------------+----------------------------------+