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From: earle@smeagol.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: NNTP vs. remote NFS mounts
Message-ID: <918@smeagol.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: Wed, 4-Mar-87 00:56:43 EST
Article-I.D.: smeagol.918
Posted: Wed Mar  4 00:56:43 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Mar-87 21:52:29 EST
Sender: news@smeagol.JPL.NASA.GOV
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 38

I was reading Gene Spafford's `Concise History Of Usenet' posting, and got
to thinking.  One of the paragraphs states:


>This protocol allows hosts to exchangearticles via TCP/IP connections
>rather than using the traditional uucp.  It also permits users to read
>and post news (using a modified version of "rn" or other user agents)
>from machines which cannot or chose not to install the USENET news
>software.  Reading and posting are done using TCP/IP messages to a
>server host which does run the USENET software.  Sites which have many
>workstations like the Sun and Apollo products find this a convenient
>way to allow workstations like the Sun and Apollo products find this a
>convenient way to allow workstation users to read news without having
>to store articles on each system.

My own personal decision was to place the posting/reading commands
in a universally mounted /usr/local/bin ({check,post,read,v,r}news).  I also
universally NFS mount /usr/lib/news (allowing access to inews), and
/usr/spool/news (everyone can get at the articles), and finally I have my
system set to `ME' in /usr/lib/news/sys (so any machine can post).  I have
a network of over 10 Suns, and this scheme seems to work just fine for me.

What I was wondering was if anyone out there had tried to gather any
qualitative statistics comparing doing things this way (i.e., doing NFS
mounts everywhere to allow all workstations access to news) versus using
NNTP to allow remote news access.  I'm not sure I could make a definitive
statement either way, but my first guess would be that using NFS would be
slightly quicker, if less `elegant' (i.e., having to do all those NFS mounts).
But then again, *I'm* the only person who gives a damn about that sort of 
thing anyway; the users just care about reading news from anywhere (plus,
they also get to use any news reader rather than being tied to `rrn').

Comments?
-- 
	Greg Earle	UUCP: sdcrdcf!smeagol!earle; attmail!earle
	JPL		ARPA: elroy!smeagol!earle@csvax.caltech.edu
AT&T: +1 818 354 4034	      earle@jplpub1.jpl.nasa.gov (For the daring)
Is this an out-take from the ``BRADY BUNCH''?