# Unresolved URL issues: NNTP

Tim Berners-Lee (timbl@ptpc00.cern.ch)
Tue, 22 Mar 94 16:45:24 +0100

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    Date: Tue, 22 Mar 94 16:45:24 +0100

    From: Tim Berners-Lee <timbl@ptpc00.cern.ch>

    Message-Id: <9403221545.AA13684@ptpc00.cern.ch>

    To: mitra@pandora.sf.ca.us (Mitra)

    Subject: Unresolved URL issues: NNTP

: b) News and NNTP URLs
: Majority: unclear
: There was a discussion on this some time back. I belive that Tim and
: Mitra were on opposite sides of this fence. Would it be possible for the
: two of them to send a message 20 lines or less with a brief summary of
: their respective sides? Whatever is finally decided the WG grandfathered
: the news URL already.

Ok, I argued that :

The existing URL has a direct mapping onto the NNTP protocol.
and also allows retrieval from a body of articles which have
been acquired using Usenet or any compatible protocols, which
account for a large number of users.
NNTP servers which do not support retrieval by article ID are broken.
The news: URL is suitable as a reference to be passed anywhere in the world.
It is only in practice valid for a certain time, but that is
quite reasonable for a URL.

I argued that the proposed
<url:nntp://nntp.path.net/comp.infosystems.www/1234>
would allow people to make references which could be used in two
ways. If the host part is ignored and one's local NNTP host
is used, the URL gives you back a different message! Clearly not
what is proposed.

If the host part is used, then access will normally fail because an NNTP
server only allows local access. This will happen often, if
client software produces URLs of this form: a person making reference
to a URL on one site should be able to dereference it on another site,
even immediately. To propose a standard which allows this is to
create a hole for people to fall into. The fact that people have not
fallen into it much so far follows from the fact that (a) WWW software
does not allow it, and (b) there is little software for making links
easily. We are not designing for (b) -- we are designing for a case
in which I can refer to a news article by dragging and dropping
its icon into my mail message, and sending it off without a thought.

If the NNTP server IS used to allow global access,
then this is basically an abuse of the NNTP protocol. It is designed
as a flood broadcast protocol, and not a random retrieval protocol.
To give access to one's news globally, it is better in that case
to make a gopher or HTTP gateway, which is easily done with existing
software.

However, I put it into the spec, as I am editing it and not authoring it.
The wording follows. -- Tim BL
See
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Addressing/URL/4.1_Schemes.html
_______________________________

NNTP

This is an alternative form of reference for news articles, specifically to
be used with NNTP servers, and particularly those incomplete server
implementations which do not allow retrieval by message identifier. In all
other cases the "news" scheme should be used.

The news server name, newsgroup name, and index number of an article within
the newsgroup on that particular server are given. The NNTP protocol must
be used.

Note1.

This form of URL is not of global accessability, as typically NNTP servers
only allow access from local clients. Note that the article numbers within
groups vary from server to server.

This form or URL should not be quoted outside this local area. It should not
be used within news articles for wider circulation than the one server. This
is a local identifier for a resource which is often available globally, and
so is not recommended except in the case in which incomplete NNTP
implementations on the local server force its adoption.

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