Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mailrus!wuarchive!kuhub.cc.ukans.edu!anu-news!list
From: munnari!csc.anu.oz.au!gih900@UUNET.UU.NET (Geoff Huston)
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: RE: Slow Server Access
Message-ID: <8910100605.AA08942@uunet.uu.net>
Date: 10 Oct 89 19:21:27 GMT
Sender: ANU-NEWS Discussion <ANU-NEWS@NDSUVM1.BITNET>
Reply-To: Geoff Huston <munnari!csc.anu.oz.au!gih900@UUNET.UU.NET>
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X-cc:         GIH900@uunet.UU.NET

>1)      Why does it take approx 3 to 5 minutes to get past the "Working on
>group x" message?  Is this out of the ordinary?  Is there some way to speed
>the process up?  I know that there was some discussion about increasingly
>slow times due to an increase of articles.  This however, occurred with all
>newsgroups created.
     
When working with a Unix NNTP server VMS NEWS requests the complete list of
message-ids from the remote server, and then checks off this list against the
local holdings. If there are new items on the remote server NEWS requests the
header of every new item (to extract the appropriate headers to use in the
local database).
     
>2)      Why do some served groups register as having 0 articles when they
>do not, and then refuse to check the remote server?  I think this has
>something to do with how Newsskim.com works, as the next day there are some
>articles present.
     
This is not intended behaviour and I must admit I've never seen this happen -
ALL /served groups are checked against the server during a SKIM pass.
     
Geoff