# RE: Unresolved URL issues: NNTP

hallam@alws.cern.ch
Wed, 23 Mar 1994 11:00:33 +0100

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    Date: Wed, 23 Mar 1994 11:00:33 +0100

    Message-Id: <9403231000.AA19702@dxmint.cern.ch>

    From: hallam@alws.cern.ch

    Subject: RE: Unresolved URL issues: NNTP

>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.

One way of resolving these is to require both an article number *AND* a message
id. The article number is then essentialy an accelerator, quite the use of
which I have no idea... The point is that the URL would then remain a
Universal Resource locator.

The `host' need not in fact be a real host. If we set up a private NNTP
network not connected to USEnet we wish to distinguish it in some fashion
since the articles will not be avaliable from the USEnet host. We might have
1, 10 or 1000+ servers but all we really need is a key and a way of
resolving it.

The desire for wanting multiple hosts is orthogonal to the bit about article
ids. Article ids have no value except to compress the window history list.
As Tim says if a server can't access by message id it ain't NNTP suggest
that if a mechanism for accessing such server is written it is called
BNTP for Broken NTP.

so we could recognise the following as the default expansion of `news':

NNTP://usenet/

If someone starts up another network, eg VMSnet then the URL has the form:

NNTP://vmsnet/

By default a private net is named after the first host but the software
is free to mapp the URL onto *any* server withing the NNTP service domain.

On a similar point, at some point we will need a mechainsim for accessing
mirrored sites transparently. the URL HTTP://info.cern.ch/ migth be mirrored
in the USA for example someone who knows this would want to set up the
browser so that the url is resolved by the closer site even though it reads
info.cern.ch. We could play tricks with DNS of course to create a
*genuine* mirror... At the moment the machine gets so many connections that
it doubles as a storage heater and coffee maker...

Phill H-B

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