brians@sequent.com (Brian Sheets) (04/23/91)
Can someone explain how multicast is used. I have a news group that I want to mail to a few users. tia -- Brian Sheets KA7KDX 5544 N Burrage. "Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly Portland Or. 97217 fish heads" 503-578-4091
kre@cs.mu.oz.au (Robert Elz) (04/25/91)
brians@sequent.com (Brian Sheets) writes: >Can someone explain how multicast is used. I have a news group >that I want to mail to a few users. Assuming this is a question about B news (I'll leave it to Henry if you're asking about C news) an example might show it more clearly than any words ... This is from my sys file (with mail addresses changed to protect the innocent): a1@b1.c1.d1:world,aus,!aus.all,aus.jokes,!aus.jokes.d:M:NewsMail # cs.footy to hordes around the world ... a2@b2.c2.d2:world,cs.footy:M:NewsMail a3@b3.c3.d3:world,cs.footy:M:NewsMail a4@b4.c4.d4:world,cs.footy:M:NewsMail # aus.jobs to random foreigners... a5@b5.c5.d5:world,aus.jobs:M:NewsMail a6@b6.c6.d6:world,aus.jobs:M:NewsMail # other misc aus groups to foreigners... a7@b7.c7.d7:world,aus.auug,aus.archives,aus.netstatus,aus.jobs,\ aus.sun-works:M:NewsMail # NewsMail:all:OS:/usr/lib/sendmail -oi1 -odi -oeq %s There is actually lots more in there than that, but I think that you get the idea. Basically one news article starts one sendmail, with a list of addresses of those to whom the article should be sent. The "NewsMail" line must be last (of this group at least). Obviously B news must be compiled with MULTICAST enabled for this to work. kre
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (04/26/91)
In article <kre.672514936@mundamutti.cs.mu.OZ.AU> kre@cs.mu.oz.au (Robert Elz) writes: >>Can someone explain how multicast is used. I have a news group >>that I want to mail to a few users. > >Assuming this is a question about B news (I'll leave it to Henry >if you're asking about C news) ... We've never done a lot about this in C News, seeing nothing much wrong with lines like: daffy:sci.ducks/all::mail duckburg.BITNET!daisy gladstone@slobbovia.edu howard Multicast for more substantial transmission we've punted to the batcher; since all the decision-making on how things get sent is done by tiny shell files, it's easy enough to do a custom job for odd requirements. It's hard for us to figure out what might be required when we don't use it ourselves. -- And the bean-counter replied, | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology "beans are more important". | henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry
kre@cs.mu.oz.au (Robert Elz) (04/27/91)
henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >We've never done a lot about this in C News, seeing nothing much wrong >with lines like: >daffy:sci.ducks/all::mail duckburg.BITNET!daisy gladstone@slobbovia.edu howard That's fine for one newsgroup that is mailed to lots of people, but isn't so great when you have lots of people getting lots of mix & match groups - esp if you'd really like to mail each article to each recipient just once, regardless of cross posting. >It's hard >for us to figure out what might be required when we don't use it ourselves. Perfectly reasonable - multicasting mail was never what the multicast stuff was for anyway (turned out to be useful as an afterthought). These days its just about impossible to dispatch individual articles (unbatched), which is what MULTICAST was originally for really, so the original rational is no longer as relevant as it once was (though we still use it here a bit - to speed local newsgroups to local recipients, so they don't need to be queued behind the morass of trash in the worldwide groups). kre