Re: NNTPCACHE

[George Bonser <grep@oriole.sbay.org>]

On 08-Dec-97 A. M. Varon wrote:
> ----------------------------<snipped>----------------------------------------
> 
> NNTPCACHE is really a cool program. It's a proxy like squid, but instead
> of proxying html, jpgs, etc., It proxies nntp newsgroups. It saves you
> enormous bandwitdth just using this one. This baby can even filter spams
> and connect to multiple nntpservers.
> 
> A little hitch on this one is.... For non profit organizations and
> educational institutions, it's free. For commercial use, you have to pay.
> Therefore, It's not exactly free. 
> 
> Anybody care to compile it as a .deb file? 

I subscribed to the nntpcache mailing list for a long time.  Development is
on-again off-again but it does seem to creep along.  WHat I like about it is
that it is smart enough to know that if nobody is reading a group, it does not
pull articles for it.  If someone requests articles in a group that has no
cached articles, it will go and get some.  Basicly, it is like DNews.  It pulls
articles based on what is being read.  It sure saves network bandwidth and disk
space.  

Actually, a program could be built to do this with cnews + nntpd + suck.  The
program would have a cache table that it passes to suck in the form of a
sucknewsrc.  It would tail the nntplog and if a group is read that is not being
cached, it could be added to the sucknewsrc and then get-news would be kicked
off to pull some articles.  If a group is not read in a configurable number of
days, it is removed from the sucknewsrc and no articles would be pulled for
that group until someone starts to read it again.  Since cnews, suck, and nntpd
are pretty stable programs and are already debian packages, a small glue
program to do this should not be too difficult.  It could be done with inn as
well.  This would avoid some of the problems that nntpcache has in the nntp
part of its code.



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