RFC 2980 (rfc2980) - Page 1 of 27

Common NNTP Extensions

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Network Working Group                                          S. Barber
Request for Comments: 2980                    Academ Consulting Services
Category: Informational                                     October 2000


                         Common NNTP Extensions

Status of this Memo

   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
   not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
   memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   In this document, a number of popular extensions to the Network News
   Transfer Protocol (NNTP) protocol defined in RFC 977 are documented
   and discussed.  While this document is not intended to serve as a
   standard of any kind, it will hopefully serve as a reference document
   for future implementers of the NNTP protocol.  In the role, this
   document would hopefully create the possibility for some level of
   interoperability among implementations that make use of extensions.

Introduction

   RFC 977 [1] defines the NNTP protocol and  was released over a decade
   ago.  Since then, NNTP has become one of the most popular protocols
   in use on the Internet.  Many implementations of the protocol have
   been created on many different platforms and operating systems.  With
   the growth in use of the protocol, work began on a revision to NNTP
   in 1991, but that work did not result in a new standard protocol
   specification.  However, many ideas from that working group did find
   their way into many implementations of NNTP.  Additionally, many
   other extensions, often created by newsreader authors, are also in
   use.  This document will capture and define all known extensions to
   NNTP available in official NNTP server releases of some type as of
   this writing.  Where possible, the server software first implementing
   a particular extension will be noted.  It is the hope of the author
   that using this document in tandem with RFC 977 will limit the
   addition of new extensions that essentially do the same thing.
   Software developers may wish to use this document and others [2] as a
   resource for the  development of new software.





Barber                       Informational
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