Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 10:45:55 -0700 From: John Polstra <jdp@polstra.com> To: Andreas Klemm <andreas@klemm.gtn.com> Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: cvsup - the next generation multi purpose netw. distrib. system (even for news ?!) Message-ID: <199608261745.KAA29029@austin.polstra.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 25 Aug 1996 13:40:15 %2B0200." <Pine.BSF.3.95.960825132316.1968A-100000@klemm.gtn.com>
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Thanks for the kind comments about CVSup! I hope your repository is healthy again. > This night I was in a worry, because I had to ftp tons of MB's from > gatekeeper, because I needed the Modula-3 package ... > > But I think every byte was worth fetching it ! You didn't want to just use the CVSup binary? It's statically linked, and doesn't require the Modula-3 package, or anything else. And the tar.gz file is only(!) about a megabyte. :-) I am testing a new version of the Modula-3 port. It's stripped down quite a bit, so it builds faster and uses much less swap space. Also, the package is about half the size. I'll commit that as soon as I can find the time. (I've been having house guests here for about 2 weeks now.) > As you mentioned the advantages of cvsup over other network > distribution programs like sup and nntp, I got the idea, that it > should be possible, to distribute netnews very efficiently via > cvsup, because one could treat a newsgroup hierarchie like a checkout > CVS repository ... That's an interesting idea, but I don't think it's practical. Really, a news hierachy is quite different from a CVS repository. In a news hierarchy, the individual files never change. That is, each file gets created, used, and deleted (expired), but nothing else happens to it during its lifetime. Once it's created, a file does not change. In a CVS repository, on the other hand, the files themselves are modified. The main feature of CVSup is that it deals well with small modifications to individual files. That's where the bulk of the code is, and most of the complexity too. The parts of CVSup that would help with netnews are the secondary features: (1) gzip compression, and (2) the streaming protocol. The streaming protocol is probably the most important. Everybody who runs a newsfeed recognizes that NNTP's biggest problem is its stop-and-wait protocol. That slows it down dramatically. I think the best solution for news is to use an enhanced version of NNTP, with a streaming protocol. Jerry Aguirre implemented such a protocol in INN some time ago, and quite a few people use it. I've never tried it, but I have read that it helps a lot. Of course, you have to persuade your newsfeeds to use it too. Anyway, I think that Jerry's patches are available from the same place where the INN distributions are found. Compression would also help, of course. But compression is very CPU intensive. Some newsfeeds might not like the extra load. One other point about replacing NNTP with CVSup is that, politically, it would probably never happen. NNTP, with all its flaws, is the universal standard. It would take a lot to get people to start using anything different. I think that, in the short term, people will move toward a streaming version of NNTP. In the longer term, the whole netnews system will have to be replaced with something radically different. John -- John Polstra jdp@polstra.com John D. Polstra & Co., Inc. Seattle, Washington USA "Self-knowledge is always bad news." -- John Barth
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