Path: utzoo!utstat!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!olivey!jerry
From: jerry@olivey.olivetti.com (Jerry Aguirre)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: relaynews too slow
Message-ID: <49460@olivea.atc.olivetti.com>
Date: 25 Sep 90 19:52:44 GMT
References: <1990Sep23.000826.15925@zoo.toronto.edu> <49453@olivea.atc.olivetti.com> <1990Sep25.153101.2437@zoo.toronto.edu>
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In article <1990Sep25.153101.2437@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>
>There seems to be a general illusion that real-time connections are exempt
>from considerations of efficiency.  With the volume of news we currently
>see, this is not true.  Real-time or not, the most efficient way to
>transfer news is to pump data bytes, in bulk, from one end to the other,
>without control handshaking or other time-wasting complications interspersed.
>Rev 2 of NNTP includes a batching protocol for this.

Henry,

It is a pretty convincing illusion.  Certainly the NNTP/network
connections transfer a lot more news with less CPU load than UUCP
had.  The nntpxmit asks if the receiver has a particular message
ID and it the answer is no it sends it.  Granted there are turn around
delays but they effect thruput not system or network load.  On most
systems the serial input interrupts for each character.  The typical
network card interupts on the packet resulting in an order of magnitude
less overhead.  My experience with running both UUCP and NNTP bears out
this theoretical conclusion.  A uucico can be hogging 50% of the system
while a nntpd is transferring twice the articles and is not even in the
top 10 processes.

Just how do you propose to prevent massive transmission of duplicates if
"rnews" squirels away the articles without updating the history file?
I seriouly want to know your philosophy on this.

>Our reaction to the way a lot of NNTP sites currently do their news
>transmission is roughly:  "Jesus, are they all running on Crays?!?".

I manage a full feed quite nicely and without a Cray.  Even a 0.69 MIPs
B news system can handle multiple full NNTP feeds (if it wern't for the
damn UUCP connections).

>However, this need not imply a contradiction with C News's philosophy
>of processing in bulk for efficiency.  You just have to do things more
>cleverly to combine the two.  Work is in progress on this.

Glad to hear it.

				Jerry Aguirre