flee@shire.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee) (05/04/89)
Has anyone used the multicast feature to batch news? I was thinking of compressed batches. Multicast batching could reduce compression overhead significantly. Something like, a multicast target that batches the standard news subscription to multiple hosts, and other targets for regional and non-standard subscriptions. Non-overlapping subscription classes may be a little tricky because of the confusion between hierarchies and distributions... -- Felix Lee flee@shire.cs.psu.edu *!psuvax1!shire!flee
eric@snark.uu.net (Eric S. Raymond) (05/06/89)
In <FLEE.89May3160952@shire.cs.psu.edu> Felix Lee wrote: > Has anyone used the multicast feature to batch news? I was thinking > of compressed batches. Multicast batching could reduce compression > overhead significantly. In TMN-Netnews multicast is handled in a way designed to make this easy. Basically it goes like this: In the feeds file (the old sys file) the target system name field may contain a comma-separated list of systems. Normally, such an entry behaves exactly as several duplicate entries (one for each system) would. However, if the entry includes the 'X' multicast flag, the list of systems is treated as a multicast group. If no explicit transmission command is given in the entry, UUCP multicasting using Shane McCarron's uucast code is done. If there *is* an explicit transmission command, the whole system list is passed to it as an argument (this is a hook for hypothetical future multicast networking methods). This is orthogonal to the batching options. So if you have batching set on a multicast group you should get exactly the result you want -- one batch generated, with multicast xmit to the target systems. This is the case I had in mind when I designed the feature. And yes, this is all documented in the installation guide. Warning: the multicast code has been exercised in debug mode but not live- tested yet, it's a recent addition. It's very simple though, I'm confident that it will work fine. -- Eric S. Raymond (the mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews) UUCP: {uunet!vu-vlsi!cbmvax}!snark!eric INTERNET: eric@snark.uu.net Post: 22 S. Warren Avenue, Malvern PA 19355 Phone: (215)-296-5718
mark@jhereg.Jhereg.MN.ORG (Mark H. Colburn) (05/07/89)
In article <1RMF4D#9rtBZh=eric@snark.uu.net> eric@snark.uu.net (Eric S. Raymond) writes: >In <FLEE.89May3160952@shire.cs.psu.edu> Felix Lee wrote: >> Has anyone used the multicast feature to batch news? I was thinking >> of compressed batches. Multicast batching could reduce compression >> overhead significantly. Most of the sites in the state of Minnesota have used a version of multicasting which was developed by Steve McDowell and Shane McCarron. The software works with the existing 2.11 new software and does multicasting quite simply. It supports both vanilla and HDB UUCP. If there is enough interest, I can post the software... -- Mark H. Colburn mark@jhereg.mn.org Minnetech Consulting, Inc.