.Ch "Setting Up Netnews Feeds Using the Ihave/sendme Protocol"
.Ix ihave/sendme
.SH
Introduction
.PP
The ihave/sendme protocol is a means of conserving network bandwidth
at the expense of some real-time delays in getting netnews.
It pre-dates the NetNews Transfer Protocol (NNTP)
for the TCP/IP protocol stack by several years and attempts much
the same optimisation,
but ihave/sendme is batched,
unlike NNTP.
.PP
The above perhaps needs emphasizing:
\fIihave/sendme has nothing whatsoever to do with NNTP\fR.
NNTP has ``ihave'' and ``sendme'' messages, which have somewhat similar
functions to the ihave/sendme protocol (hence the similarity of names),
but the implementations are completely unrelated.
If you want to set up an NNTP feed, you are reading the wrong document.
.PP
Ihave/sendme
is sketched in extremely vague terms in
ARPA Internet RFC 1036 (nee 850),
.Ix "RFC 1036"
but the description therein is so lofty as
to be useless as a protocol specification.
.SH
Into the Breach
.PP
The basic ihave/sendme strategy is for a site which has just received a new
netnews article to send an
.I ihave
.Ix "control messages" ihave
.Ix "control messages" sendme
.Ix Message-IDs
netnews control message
containing the Message-ID of the new article to each
of its ihave/sendme
neighbours;
the neighbour consults its netnews
.I history
file and if it has not seen the article,
sends back a
.I sendme
control message containing the original Message-ID;
upon receipt of the
.I sendme ,
the first site will transmit the article via normal channels
to the requesting neighbour.
If you are getting exactly one news feed,
ihave/sendme is of no benefit and merely slows down the reception
of news.
If you are getting multiple feeds,
the added delay may not be worth the reduction in volume of
news transferred
(though sites being fed by long-distance telephone may disagree).
In general,
ihave/sendme should be a last resort,
if only because it is more complicated to understand and set up
than an ordinary news feed.
.PP
Due to the high volume of netnews,
sending individual articles is always a performance disaster
.Ix "performance disaster" NNTP
.Ix NNTP "performance disaster"
(see B News,
NNTP and unbatched ihave/sendme),
so the golden rule of netnews is
``Thou shalt batch thine articles.''.
This makes the above sketch a little slower and more complicated:
now individual articles are not sent,
but batches of
.I ihave ,
.I sendme ,
and
netnews messages are transmitted,
incurring further delay since netnews batchers are usually
run only once per hour,
say.
.PP
We will now walk through an example ihave/sendme set up between
two C news sites
(\c
.I utzoo
and
.I utstat ),
with reference to the following
.I sys
.Ix sys
.Ix files sys
file fragments and flow diagram.
Most of the work is done by specialised batch preparers.
.I relaynews
merely responds to
.I "ihave site"
or
.I "sendme site"
control messages
by writing the name of the file containing the control message
onto
site\c
.B .ihave/togo
or
site\c
.B .sendme/togo ,
respectively.
This scheme owes some ideas to Root Boy Jim of UUNET.
.Ix "Root Boy Jim"
.br
.ne 1i
.SH
utzoo's sys file
.LP
.DS L
.ft B
# Send ihave telling utstat what we have -- batcher turns the batch into a
# giant control message and posts it to "to.utstat".  (#1)
utstat.wehave/utstat:rec.music.synth,!to/all:I:
# actual transmission of control messages, via normal means (#2)
utstat:to.utstat/all:f:
.ft
.DE
.br
.ne 1i
.SH
utstat's sys file
.LP
.DS L
.ft B
# Send ihave telling utzoo what we have -- batcher turns the batch into a
# giant control message and posts it to "to.utzoo".  (#1)
utzoo.wehave/utzoo:rec.music.synth,!to/all:I:
# actual transmission of control messages, via normal means (#2)
utzoo:to.utzoo/all:f:
.ft
.DE
.ne 1i
.SH
utzoo's batchparms file
.TS L
l s s s s s
l l l l l l .
.ft B
# sample ihave/sendme setup
# site	size	queue	builder	muncher	sender
# ----	----	-----	-------	-------	------
utstat.wehave	40000	20	batchih	nocomp	viainews
utstat.ihave	40000	20	batchsm	nocomp	viainews
utstat.sendme	40000	20	batchra	nocomp	vianowhere
.TE
.ne 6i
.so ihave.pic
.SH
An Example
.SH
An article arrives on utzoo
.PP
A new article arrives on
.I utzoo
in newsgroup
.I rec.music.synth
and is matched by the first
.I sys
file line
.B "on utzoo" ,
which writes the Message-ID of the article
onto a batch file
(\c
.I $NEWSARTS/out.going/utstat.wehave/togo ).
There are some subtleties here:
it is essential to add
.B ,!to
to the subscription list
if that list contains
.B all
or
.B to
to prevent looping messages;
and
it is always worthwhile to prevent leaking local
newsgroups out one's full feeds,
so if the subscription list contained
.B all
one would want to add something like
.B ,!general
or
.B ,!utstat .
Eventually,
the batcher runs on the batch file.
.PP
The
.I batchih
batcher on
.I utzoo
prepares
a batch of Message-IDs as an
.I ihave
control message to
.I utstat
and submits it to
.I "inews \-h" 
which matches
.I sys
line #2,
and
writes the file name of the
article file containing the
control message
on the usual
.I utstat
batch file
(\c
.I $NEWSARTS/out.going/utstat/togo ).
.PP
Eventually,
the normal batcher will run on
.I utzoo
on the usual
.I utstat
batch file
and will produce batches,
including the
.I ihave
control message,
and transmit them to
.I utstat
by means specified in
.I $NEWSCTL/batchparms .
.SH
The resulting ihave message arrives on utstat
.PP
When the
.I ihave
control message arrives on
.I utstat ,
.I relaynews
.Ix relaynews
will write the name of the file containing the control message
on the
.I utzoo
.I ihave
batch file
(\c
.I $NEWSARTS/out.going/utzoo.ihave/togo ).
.PP
Eventually,
the
.I batchsm
batcher will run on
.I utstat
on that batch file,
which will produce a
.I sendme
control message
and submit it to
.I "inews \-h"
which matches
.I sys
line #2,
and writes the name of the
.I sendme
control message on
the usual
.I utzoo
batch file
(\c
.I $NEWSARTS/out.going/utzoo/togo)
.PP
Eventually,
the normal batcher will run on
.I utstat
on the usual
.I utzoo
batch file,
and will produce batches including
the
.I sendme
and send them to
.I utzoo
by means specified in
.I $NEWSCTL/batchparms .
.Ix batchparms
.Ix files batchparms
.SH
The resulting sendme message arrives on utzoo
.PP
When the
.I sendme
control message arrives on
.I utzoo ,
.I relaynews
writes the name of the file containing the control message
on the
.I sendme
batch file,
and the
.I batchra
batcher eventually
writes the file names of the requested articles
(named by Message-ID in
the
.I sendme
control message)
on the usual
.I utstat
batch file.
.PP
Eventually,
the normal batcher on
.I utzoo
will run and produce batches,
including the articles requested by the
.I sendme ,
and will send them to
.I utstat
by means specified in
.I $NEWSCTL/batchparms .
.SH
Comparison with B News
.Ix ihave/sendme "B News"
.PP
There is a lot of activity involved in ihave/sendme,
and there are at least five distinct channels
and three transactions needed to send a batch of articles.
B news ``simplifies'' the
.I sys
file by requiring certain
.I sys
file options (sic)
to be set to fixed values,
and
by overloading madly.
The resulting
.I sys
file is much more difficult to decypher,
and if you should want to specify non-default options,
you are out of luck.