Topic: A d*mn fine product! But...

[Ketil]

Just three features are missing to make this a real killer:

1) Information bays can be reached via HTTP 1.1 virtual domains. E.g. www.info.com is an alias that can be used to reach esmithserver.realdomain.com/info/

2) NNTP News cache. There are a few good ones.

3) Automatic installations of (security related) patches.

[Charlie Brady]

Ketil wrote:

> Just three features are missing to make this a real killer:
>
> 1) Information bays can be reached via HTTP 1.1 virtual
> domains. E.g. www.info.com is an alias that can be used to
> reach esmithserver.realdomain.com/info/

That'll be one of the next features to be added. Feel free to contribute the code, if you are able.

> 2) NNTP News cache. There are a few good ones.

I doubt that would be in high demand, myself. Unfortunately, the best newscache that I'm aware of - nntpcache from nntpcache.org - is not free.

> 3) Automatic installations of (security related) patches.

Or at least automatic downloading, and optional installation of updates. I've started having a look at Autorpm with that in mind.

Charlie

[Ketil]

> > 2) NNTP News cache. There are a few good ones.

> I doubt that would be in high demand, myself. Unfortunately, the best
> newscache that I'm aware of - nntpcache from nntpcache.org - is not free.

I am involved with a small, regional ISP.
Measurements show that NNTP traffic accounts for more than 25% of the traffic across our 4MB links. They also show that if we cached NNTP, the traffic generated accross our links could be as low as 4% (!)
This may not be that much, but when the alternative is to upgrade our links, it is quite obious what is the preferred solution

An alternative (GPL) NNTP Cache may be NewsCache at http://www.infosys.tuwien.ac.at/NewsCache/

I've experimented with the server a bit more, and I think I am falling in love... The whole concept of not needing to manually edit or configure anything, just point and click in menus. Superb! And the perhaps most important part for an ISP like us: If anything fails, it is simply a question of taking an another machine, let it chew a couple of minutes on the CD-rom and then restore the backup. Then everything is up and running as before! Pretty.

[Charlie Brady]

Ketil wrote:

> I am involved with a small, regional ISP. Measurements show
> that NNTP traffic accounts for more than 25% of the traffic
> across our 4MB links. They also show that if we cached NNTP,
> the traffic generated accross our links could be as low as 4%
> (!)

If there are any of those sites which run a news server, then there is a good chance that lots/most of the news is never read.

I wouldn't expect there to be news servers running downstream of an e-smith gateway (and if there were, running nntpcache or whatever wouldn't help, because the downstream sites would not be using NNTP to access the e-smith server, but somewhere further upstream, using IP masq). But I am prepared to be surprised

> This may not be that much, but when the alternative is to
> upgrade our links, it is quite obious what is the preferred
> solution

You would have to block NNTP access outside the e-smith net, as well as install a caching news daemon.

> An alternative (GPL) NNTP Cache may be NewsCache at
> http://www.infosys.tuwien.ac.at/NewsCache/

Yes I've seen it and used it briefly. I moved on to nntpcache because I was seeing news spool corruption - but it turned out to be a problem upstream anyway. I haven't gone back to it. It looks to me that NewsCache was a student project - and most student projects are a bit rough and aren't actively maintained.

Charlie