RFC 977 (rfc977) - Page 2 of 27

Network News Transfer Protocol

RFC 977                                                    February 1986
Network News Transfer Protocol


1.2.  The USENET News System

   Clearly, a worthwhile reduction of the amount of these resources used
   can be achieved if articles are stored in a central database on the
   receiving host instead of in each subscriber's mailbox. The USENET
   news system provides a method of doing just this.  There is a central
   repository of the news articles in one place (customarily a spool
   directory of some sort), and a set of programs that allow a
   subscriber to select those items he wishes to read.  Indexing,
   cross-referencing, and expiration of aged messages are also provided.

1.3.  Central Storage of News

   For clusters of hosts connected together by fast local area networks
   (such as Ethernet), it makes even more sense to consolidate news
   distribution onto one (or a very few) hosts, and to allow access to
   these news articles using a server and client model.  Subscribers may
   then request only the articles they wish to see, without having to
   wastefully duplicate the storage of a copy of each item on each host.

1.4.  A Central News Server

   A way to achieve these economies is to have a central computer system
   that can provide news service to the other systems on the local area
   network.  Such a server would manage the collection of news articles
   and index files, with each person who desires to read news bulletins
   doing so over the LAN.  For a large cluster of computer systems, the
   savings in total disk space is clearly worthwhile.  Also, this allows
   workstations with limited disk storage space to participate in the
   news without incoming items consuming oppressive amounts of the
   workstation's disk storage.

   We have heard rumors of somewhat successful attempts to provide
   centralized news service using IBIS and other shared or distributed
   file systems.  While it is possible that such a distributed file
   system implementation might work well with a group of similar
   computers running nearly identical operating systems, such a scheme
   is not general enough to offer service to a wide range of client
   systems, especially when many diverse operating systems may be in use
   among a group of clients.  There are few (if any) shared or networked
   file systems that can offer the generality of service that stream
   connections using Internet TCP provide, particularly when a wide
   range of host hardware and operating systems are considered.

   NNTP specifies a protocol for the distribution, inquiry, retrieval,
   and posting of news articles using a reliable stream (such as TCP)
   server-client model. NNTP is designed so that news articles need only


Kantor & Lapsley