From: ted@telematics.com (Ted Goldblatt)
Subject: NFS vs NNTP for news reading
Summary: which is better to use? (LONG-ish)
Organization: Telematics Intl., Inc.; Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 21:53:59 GMT

Thanks to all who responded to my request for suggestions on 
sizing a news partition.  (BTW, the general consensus was that
given my (restrictive) expire schedule, 300MB would be tight,
but adequate right now, though it probably wouldn't be in 6
months or so.  There was also a feeling that the 4 day expire
was too short, so I'm attempting to weasel another couple of
hundred MB (you know, I remember back to when that was a lot
of disk space :-)) so that I'll have breathing room and so I
can extend the expiry on at least the "important" stuff to
(maybe) a week).

New question:

Is it the sense of the net (:-)) that having the news server 
feed the news readers via nntp is preferable to feeding via 
(read only) exported NFS filesystems, or vice versa?

I have seen some (vague) discussions on this topic, but I
don't remember any conclusions (it may be too configuration
dependent, though I believe Henry Spencer at least made it
clear to me that _he_ doesn't like nntp).

My config:

cnews (will be the latest, since I have to reinstall anyway
:-)), trn with threads database is the principal newsreader,
some use of GNUS - as far as I know no other readers
currently used, basically a full feed, SunOS 4.1.1
(upgrading to 4.1.2, but not all at once - the new news
host, however, _will_ be running 4.1.2), reading from
Apollos also needed, but no other platforms need be
supported (at least at this time)

3 ethernets (call them X, Y, and Z).  Each is populated with
relatively small number of workstations (8 to about 15).  No
other (significant) users sit on the nets.  Slow growth (at
most) of the workstation population is expected.  The
workstations and servers are largely Sparcs of various
flavors, with a few Apollos (I use one) and a few HPs.  All
workstations are disked, so no paging traffic hits any of
the nets, and in general the nets are far from saturated.

Net X (which I happen to be on) has a router with our
Internet link (56kb leased line).  Our news host is
currently a workstation on net X.  We will be moving the
news to a file server (Sparc of some flavor with 32 or 40 MB
of RAM and lots of files, but not too much activity) on net
Y.  Connecting X, Y, and Z is a (separate) router that also
provides connectivity to our 2 remote sites (low bandwidth).

Users on net X are (relatively heavy) news users; there will
be some (but probably less) news use on net Y.  There is
(I believe) no interest in news on the part of users on net
Z.  (The news server is being moved to net Y because that's
where a file server with space exists; as I indicated to 
several people by mail, news is a luxury here and must
subsist on space we can scrounge :-(.)

The bandwidth between nets X and Y has been measured
(at I believe the FTP level) to be on the order of 70kB (bytes)
per second.  There is currently very little traffic between 
the nets, and in particular, there are no NFS file systems
mounted between the nets (not policy, just no requirement
up to now).

So...
As I see it, we have 2 choices for how newsreaders on nets
X and Y access the news store: exclusively use NNTP (for
accessing active, articles, trn threads database, posting,
and anything else needed), or export the news file system
(read only) and handle posting either via NNTP or (as in
the standard(?) cnews inews) using rsh to export an inews
command to the server.  If it matters, we have a single
incoming feed (NNTP) and currently have no outgoing feeds.
If we _do_ ever add an outgoing feed, it would be to one
of our remote sites.

Firstly: would a purely NFS solution work?  I'm assuming that
there are no synchronization issues except when posting, but
I could be wrong.

Secondly: (taking into account the bandwidth bottleneck at
our router (which will have to handle newsflow in both
directions, since we will _not_ be moving the router which
is our Internet connection to net Y)) are there obvious
benefits to one or the other approach?

Thirdly: is there a hybrid or other approach that would be
superior to either of these?

Finally: if the NFS solution is deemed preferable, would
using NNTP or rsh for posting be better?

Thanx for all assistance!

ted

-- 
Ted Goldblatt    ted@telematics.com     (305) 351-4367
    Telematics Intl., Inc.   Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Newsgroups: news.admin.technical,news.software.b,news.software.readers