newsx 1.6 review
DownloadNewsx is an NNTP client for Unix
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Newsx is an NNTP client for Unix. It connects to remote NNTP servers and receives incoming and outgoing articles
Newsx is also well suited for large spools with normal feeds, being used for pulling newsgroups from specific NNTP servers that are not distributed in the usual manner. Since newsx obeys the normal news spool configuration file and requires little or no specific configuration, the administrative burden should be minimized.
Here are some key features of "newsx":
compatible with C News and INN local news servers
configuration relies on standard C News and INN mechanisms for setting up newsservers and newsgroups
setting of which newsgroups will be exchanged with which remote server based on sys or newsfeeds files, making administration easy
logging of errors that occurred, as well as article transfer statistics
optional log file for actual articles posted, and collection of posted articles in folders
has been designed to be nice, so as not to overload the remote news server
uses only standard RFC-977 functions, so should be compatible with the vast majority of news servers
comprehensive error recovery for posting as well as for fetching; failed postings will be retried at the next opportunity, while fetching will resume at the point where it stopped
refers to news history database to prevent fetching of articles already in the local spool. will not fetch crossposted articles more than once. does not rely on Xref, since many sites does not provide it.
interface to popular news filters like Cleanfeed
Pulling news
News transfer via fetching to local news spools is sometimes claimed to be an inefficient way of transferring news compared to connecting newsreaders directly to the remote NNTP server.
The fact of the matter is that if set up and used correctly, exactly the opposite is the case.
A local news spool allows news transfer to occur at off-peak hours, thereby decreasing the host server load in the critical period. This will tie up less modems at peak hours, as well as decreasing the connect time since the actual transfer will run much quicker.
A fetch based system is also easier to administrate then the feeding kind, since every site decides for itself what groups it will exchange with whom. The major down-side is that article propagation times will be longer. For sites that are leafs in the news distribution tree, this is usually not very important.
Much of the problems connected with news pulling is connected to the use of the RFC-977 NEWNEWS command. Most news servers has implemented this command in an inefficient manner, which will put severe loads on the newsserver. Newsx does not use NEWNEWS.
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