RFC 977 (rfc977) - Page 1 of 27
Network News Transfer Protocol
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
Network Working Group Brian Kantor (U.C. San Diego)
Request for Comments: 977 Phil Lapsley (U.C. Berkeley)
February 1986
Network News Transfer Protocol
A Proposed Standard for the Stream-Based
Transmission of News
Status of This Memo
NNTP specifies a protocol for the distribution, inquiry, retrieval,
and posting of news articles using a reliable stream-based
transmission of news among the ARPA-Internet community. NNTP is
designed so that news articles are stored in a central database
allowing a subscriber to select only those items he wishes to read.
Indexing, cross-referencing, and expiration of aged messages are also
provided. This RFC suggests a proposed protocol for the ARPA-Internet
community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements.
Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
1. Introduction
For many years, the ARPA-Internet community has supported the
distribution of bulletins, information, and data in a timely fashion
to thousands of participants. We collectively refer to such items of
information as "news". Such news provides for the rapid
dissemination of items of interest such as software bug fixes, new
product reviews, technical tips, and programming pointers, as well as
rapid-fire discussions of matters of concern to the working computer
professional. News is very popular among its readers.
There are popularly two methods of distributing such news: the
Internet method of direct mailing, and the USENET news system.
1.1. Internet Mailing Lists
The Internet community distributes news by the use of mailing lists.
These are lists of subscriber's mailbox addresses and remailing
sublists of all intended recipients. These mailing lists operate by
remailing a copy of the information to be distributed to each
subscriber on the mailing list. Such remailing is inefficient when a
mailing list grows beyond a dozen or so people, since sending a
separate copy to each of the subscribers occupies large quantities of
network bandwidth, CPU resources, and significant amounts of disk
storage at the destination host. There is also a significant problem
in maintenance of the list itself: as subscribers move from one job
to another; as new subscribers join and old ones leave; and as hosts
come in and out of service.
Kantor & Lapsley