6 Sep
2017
6 Sep
'17
2:25 p.m.
If you're one of the very few people who have ever
taken advantage of
the ability to read USENET news via AMPRNet and the news.ucsd.edu server,
you should be aware that that server is failing from old age and will be
taken out of service soon. We don't plan to replace it; Usenet itself
is fading away. I co-authored the NNTP protocol some 31 years ago;
that's a pretty good run for any internet standard.
I wasn't aware that there was any special service from news.ucsd.edu towards
AMPRNet... does it carry any special groups other than rec.radio.amateur.*?
Fortunately my ISP still maintains USENET servers, two separate clusters
even, one for what we used to use for news and another one dedicated to
moving large blobs of gibberish :-)
Indeed I see your name above RFC977! Great!
I once maintained a CNEWS server for a company, which used a UUCP batch
feed over a 9600 baud phone modem. The group list had to be trimmed all the
time so it would not get behind so much it would never catch up, and the
200MB spool had to be carefully watched as well. Those were the days...