From: pr...@suburbia.net (Julian Assange)
Subject: NNTPCACHE 0.85 first ALPHA release! 
(Multi-server NNTP news caching daemon)
Date: 1996/04/15
Message-ID: <829582175.220137@suburbia.net>#1/1
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distribution: inet
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organization: AUSNet Services pty. ltd.
keywords: nntpcache,nntp,cache
newsgroups: suburbia.general,alt.sources,linux.development.networking,
comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,news.software.nntp,
apana.general


	 A LPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA  A
	 L PHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA A L
	 P HA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA AL P
	 H A ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALP H
	 A ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA ALPHA A

		     	      NNTPCACHE 0.85UL


This is an ALPHA release! It has only been tested with a few
combinations of hardware/OS/servers/newsreaders. There are definitely
all sorts of combinations of the above out there that nntpcache will fail to
work with at all. There is also undoubtably a slew of nasty bugs we have
yet to find, even on the tested platforms. 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) 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 information which can be
logically inferred from previously collated information, it is sent
directly from the cache, without consulting the remote servers.

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 steals more network
traffic than everything else combined (we kid you not). With nntpcache,
startup times for newsreaders becomes 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 anywhere near bandwidth
they would require.

Tested on:
	Linux 1.3.70+ and FreeBSD2.2-current, with the remote servers
	all running NNRPD (inn) or NNTPCached 0.85UL.

	Patches for other configurations appreciated.

Authors:
	Julian Assange (pr...@suburbia.net)
	Luke Bowker (pu...@suburbia.net)

Archive:
	ftp://ftp.suburbia.net/pub/nntpcache/nntpcache.tgz

-- 
"I mean, after all;  you have to consider we're only made out of dust.  That's
 admittedly not  much  to  go  on  and  we  shouldn't  forget  that.  But even
 considering, I mean it's sort of a bad beginning, we're not doing too bad. So
 I personally have faith that even in this lousy situation we're faced with we
 can make it. You get me?" - Leo Bulero/PKD
+---------------------+--------------------+----------------------------------+
|Julian Assange RSO   | PO Box 2031 BARKER | Secret Analytic Guy Union        |
|pr...@suburbia.net   | VIC 3122 AUSTRALIA | finger for PGP key hash ID =     |
|pr...@gnu.ai.mit.edu | FAX +61-3-98199066 | 0619737CCC143F6DEA73E27378933690 |
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