============================================== Biographies of NNRP-L readers (May 4, 1992) ============================================== ======================================================= Petri Ojala Organization: Finnish University and Research Network EUnet Finland System Environment: Unix workstations with workstation and terminal users, remote unix systems, LAN's and PC/Mac users with dial- up access to the network (dedicated to special protocol like NNRP or dial-up IP). Both high-speed and low- speed links. Why I am interested in NNRP: I feel that NNTP does not meet the requirements for advanced news readers. The volume of news is increasing rapidly and the time of people is too expensive to waste on non-interested news. I would like to be able to get only the information that interests me. Also I would like to find a way to offer news access to people and organisations who don't want to have news on- line but prefer off-line services, either using slow- links with intelligent front-end to the news or using faster links (eg ISDN) with intelligence at the organisation system. NNRP Goals: To find a solution to my needs ;-) ======================================================= Reino R.A. de Boer Organization: Erasmus University Rotterdam (Dept. of Computer Science) System Environment: Departemental laboratories with ~35 staff members and ~1000 student-users. ~20 Sun workstations + SunServer, and ~50 286/386-PC's. Why I am interested in NNRP: I am interested in *any* usenet-related protocol. NNRP Goals: It should probably be something along: NNTP with reader extension. In any case, I think it should be backwards compatible with (most of) NNTP. ======================================================= James Ault Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY System Environment: University campus with central server and 300-10,000 potential users, over 400 centrally maintained Unix workstations, 200-300 departmentally maintained Unix workstations, and a few Macs and PC's. Why I am interested in NNRP: Our single usenet server is already in use by over 600 hosts on campus, and we receive approximately 500 NNTP reader connections (processing over 6500 groups and 41000 articles) each day. Load has been increasing as NNTP based readers have become more popular. We have our two main reader programs configured to read over NFS, but the load has been affecting NFS performance also. NNRP Goals: Optimization for large numbers of connections while minimizing load (specifically processes and disk I/O) on the server. ======================================================= Tom Theel Organization: Sterling Software System Environment: Small network with several Suns, Decstations (Ultrix) and Macs accessing an nntp server and news on CDROM. Why I am interested in NNRP: I am on the NetNews/CD project at Sterling Software. We are providing an archive service for news on CDROM. We have been making mods to the nntp server and various readers to allow for support of reading from multiple spool directories. So, I would like to be aware of anything regarding news reading/access that is available or being discussed. NNRP goals: Allow for switching between multiple spool directories. Come to some sort of agreement upon a thread information standard, so multiple types of readers can use the same thread information. ======================================================= Neil Rickert Organization: Northern Illinois University (Computer Science Department). System Environment: Currently news is mainly read on our news server, and it is not currently available to all computer users on campus. Potentially most news reading on campus will be done on networked PCs and Macs, reading news over the network. Why I am interested in NNRP: Concerned about efficient network use and efficient use of the server. Also concerned about authentication of users who post articles over the network. ======================================================= Wayne Davison Organization: Borland, International System Environment: A workstation or three networked with lots of PCs running DOS/Windows and OS2. Why I am interested in NNRP: As the author of trn (threaded extensions to rn), I want to keep an eye on what the future of newsreader protocols holds, and to assist in whatever way I can in making a distributed network of threaded newsreaders fast and efficient. NNRP Goals: The ability to run it in a DOS/OS2 (yech!) client environment as well as a unix one. Having thread information ready and aiting for the newsreaders to use is a must. Also, facilities to improve the human's reading efficiency are critical. ======================================================= Peter R. Tattam Organization: Psychology Department, University of Tasmania System Environment: Novell local net using Trumpet version 1.05 (Beta) about 100 users. Campus wide access to a single NNTP server. Why I am interested in NNRP: I am the writer of Trumpet, and as such have an interest in making sure that trumpet keeps up with the major developments in news reader techniques. NNRP Goals: Allow better threading facilities and header extraction facilities. Allow better session management. - saving state to check for new groups. - authentication of access to individual newsgroups. - synchronization between different servers ======================================================= Peter Miller Organization: Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology and Geophysics (Australia) System Environment: SunOS 4.1.x Why I am interested in NNRP: I have written an integrated NNTP and RFC1036 server (available RSN) and would add NNRP to it as soon as it is available. NNRP Goals: Effeciency, for the client and for the server. ======================================================= jon r. luini Organization: HaL computer systems, inc and UC Santa Cruz UseNet news System Environment: HaL is not a very big environment to really be worried about the news configuration as much, but UCSC has a radically increasing NNTP service load and a majorly beaten into submission news machine. Why I am interested in NNRP: nntp as is has some major limitations as well as inefficiencies. want to see if there's any input i might have which other people might not realize as important for them (which would benefit sites in similar config to mine). NNRP Goals: 1) speed 2) remote access of general purpose threading database ======================================================= Christopher J. Ambler Organization: UUPlus System Environment: MSDOS-based UUCP and Usenet sytems Why I am interested in NNRP: Eventual port to MSDOS and UUPlus NNRP Goals: Tracking development to ease porting, and PC connectivity issues. ======================================================= Guy Middleton Organization: University of Waterloo System Environment: University with (at the moment, this changes frequently) 8 news servers. People generally read news from other systems (small Unix timesharing machines and workstations), and a small numbers of macintoshes. Why I am interested in NNRP: Want to keep up with new protocols, just in case. NNRP Goals: Flexibility in newsreader design. Need to make it general enough be able to put things like text search in either server or client, for example. ======================================================= Michael Shappe Organization: Cornell Information Technologies, Network Resources division, Collaboration Systems department System Environment: University campus w/central server w/ potential 30K users. Mostly Macs and PCs, some Unix workstations Why I am interested in NNRP: CIT is about to take a more active role in promoting NetNews on campus as a collaboration tool. I'm interested in anything that can advance the State of the Art. NNRP Goals: Much the same as your own [see David Ascher]...optimization, searching, etc. Also, authentication. ======================================================= Steven Grimm I'm Steven Grimm from Sun Microsystems (obviously.) I run a couple of the servers here and help out with a bunch of others. We have maybe 30 news servers worldwide, with more coming online as people migrate from internal mailing lists to internal newsgroups. I'd like to have some input into NNRP so there's a chance of it solving some of the problems we have with news. For instance, one of the other news admins was asking me this morning how hard it would be to switch some of his users over to a less-loaded news server, and I had to tell him it would be a pain to do transparently, because the newsreaders depend on an individual server's article numbering. I could see a future NNRP helping to get around that somehow. I'd also like to see more support for the smart clients we're just starting to see (threading is just a starting point, I think.) The list has already started discussing some of those topics, so I won't elaborate further. But mostly, it's yet another thing to distract me from my real work. :) ======================================================= Andrew Gilmartin Organization: Computing & Information Services, Brown University System Environment: My personal environment is a Macintosh. Within the Organization I use Netware 3.11 servers for file and printer sharing, and DECStations for various demon based services. Why I am interested in NNRP: Our own experiences with a locally developed conferencing system, Bruno, and those shared by the broader Netnews community have helped us shape the requirements for Bruno's replacement. This replacement must be based upon NNTP with extensions. Some of the extensions are appropriate for NNTP while others should be placed in a NNRP protocol. NNRP Goals: Like David [Ascher], I believe that NNRP should not require many resources of the client. A client should be no more than a thin interface vainer over the protocol; I'm calling these protocols "Client-Lite". In Brown's environment, a user's Macintosh, for example, will not just be running an NNRP client, but is also likely to be running an email client, a CWIS client, and some word processing application. In addition to this general goal, I am specifically interested in archiving, searching, and the semi-automatic categorization of postings. ======================================================= Jim Martin Organization: Rutgers University System Environment: University environment with a reasonably large number of central servers (25-50) and lots (several hundred) Sun Workstations. We also have a large number of Macs and PCs, but until recently they have had only very basic networking abilities. Why I am interested in NNRP: One my projects is to run our university's Dormitory Networking Project. I'd really like to provide reasonable news service to my students, but NNTP over a 19.2K SLIP line (or even over the localtalk) is painfully slow. Therefore... NNRP Goals: Optimization for less powerfull machines and narrow bandwidths. ======================================================= Bill Yeager Organization: CAMIS computer project, Stanford University. System Environment: Distributed computing environment - several UNIX servers - NeXT, SUN, Mac, DECstation clients. Why I am interested in NNRP: Distributed mail/information access is of interest to our group. IMAP was invented here, and our group has written several IMAP based email clients. Our NNTP clients come from elsewhere, and our users find news to be a very important resource for information on a day- to-day basis. NNRP Goals: To see what direction NNRP takes, and contribute to the discussions where possible. ======================================================= Michael Sanderson Organization: University of British Columbia, Computer Science Dept. System Environment: University Computer Science Dept. with approx. 150 graduate/ faculty UNIX machines and approx. 120 undergraduate UNIX machines. Mainly Sun Sparcs for graduate/faculty. Undergraduates have 1 lab of NeXTs and 2 labs of Apollos. A total of 7 different architectures. Why I am interested in NNRP: I want to keep abreast of changes in the news transfer world, since I am responsible for the USENET News configuration in the department. In addition, the current version of NNTP does not allow access limitations per groups of people. It does not keep threads and the proliferation of threaded readers, each with its own set of thread files is consuming more resources than necessary. NNRP Goals: A more efficient server, with some form of thread information being passed to the readers. Newsgroups that are accessible to particular sets of human readers. Improved searching methods, perhaps being limited to thread information. I don't want the see the server become the place where all the work is done. Information should be available from it, but it should not maintain per-user information. ======================================================= Eric Schnoebelen Organization: CONVEX Computer Corporation. System Environment: (currently) two news servers providing articles via NFS with posting via NNTP, to 20+ other timesharing hosts, plus an unknown number of workstations. (future) two additional news servers in Europe, plus additional servers at various field offices (currently all of this traffic travels over our WAN to corporate). Why I am interested in NNRP: Possibility of once again providing news reader service via something other than NFS without killing the host machine. NNRP Goals: Fast, small, efficent, feature filled. :-) Ability to provide a standardized, network based newsreader interface, complete with a limited form of threading. A database look up engine may be outside the scope of nnrp. ======================================================= Mike Wexler Organization: Kubota Pacific Computer, Inc. System Environment: Engineering Group with ~100 users mostly using Workstations or X Terminals, with quite a few Macs thrown in. Why I am intested in NNRP: Because I use nn and I want to have network access to its database. Also I would like to be able to implement a newreader without having to worry about implementing article access routines. NNRP Goals: Optimized for implementing readers like nn and trn quickly accross networks with a common database for all readers. ======================================================= Michael W. Wellman Organization: InterCon Systems Corporation System Environment: Commercial vendor of various and sundry standards-based connectivity products for the Macintosh. TCP/Connect II, one of the Macintosh products that I'm responsible for, incorporates a network news reader currently based upon NNTP. Why I am interested in NNRP: NNTP is designed for transferring news and there are some very useful features for reading news which are lacking but are inappropriate for a news transfer protocol. NNRP Goals: Substantial increases in performance (over NNTP) for both low-end and high end machines. Perhaps some means of searching/selection where the server is given selection criteria and only returns articles of interest. Given the proliferation of Macs and PCs (and other low end machines) as news readers, it makes more and more sense to make the servers as intelligent as possible and the clients as stupid as possible. Minimization of network bandwidth utilization. I'm certain that at least some of these goals conflict. ======================================================= Owen Scott Medd Organization Msen, Inc. System Environment: Mixed Unix/DOS/Macintosh network scattered over a wide geographical area. Potential number of users quite large, currently less than a thousand. Why I am interested in NNRP: As a commercial information and networking provider, I'd like to see reasonably efficient and full-featured remote reading capabilities be promoted, as well as providing the ability to eventually deal with multimedia information. NNRP Goals: Efficiency "Threads"/db interface Multimedia (and efficient too :-) ======================================================= Bob Snyder Organization: GE Aerospace, Advanced Technology Labs System Environment: Computer research center (Defense contractor) with ~120 users, network of 40-50 Suns run off a central file server, ~60 Macs, VAX 6202 VMS, couple IBM PC's, and specialized computing hardware (Connection Machine, etc) NNRP Goals: Common standard for multiple platforms, without the high bandwidth of NNTP. Extra features not relevant to Transport issues, such as private groups and threading databases. ======================================================= James Gritton Organization: Brigham Young University System Environment: A campus with multiple NNTP news servers covering different departments. 30,000 students, but probably only ~100 who currently read news. Most who read news are on UNIX workstations or VAX mainframe. Why I am interested in NNRP: Current NNTP doesn't handle security or user privacy well. Meaningful statistics are hard to come by. I have no "local" newreaders (only NNTP-based) and am interested in the best protocol for reading. NNRP Goals: User-based orientation instead of host-based. Concentration of work and data to the server, minimizing redundant network traffic, and improving usefulness of logging and statistics. ======================================================= Rich Salz Organization: Open Software Foundation (DCE Project) System Environment: I have a contract to convert UUNET to use INN (they were using C News), which is a Sparc SunOS4.x shop. I will probably pressure OSF to switch; I don't know what they're running. The machine on my desk is a DECstation3100 running OSF/1. Why I am interested in NNRP: I wrote INN; I am interested in writing a high- performance "threading" database server that all current (nn, tin, tass, trn) and future (e.g., any I might write) newsreaders can use. NNRP Goals: See above. I am not interested in high-latency networks, only those of Ethernet or better speed. ======================================================= Curt Tilmes (curt@vtucs.cc.vt.edu) Organization: Virginia Tech System Environment: University campus with central server and 5-10,000 potential users, mostly mac and pc's in both private and public environments, some Unix workstations. Why I am interested in NNRP: NNTP as it stands does not meet our user's needs for efficiency, private newsgroups, and archival/searching. NNRP Goals: Optimization for low-end machines and narrow bandwidth, archival mechanism, searching, private newsgroups ======================================================= David Ascher (David_Ascher@Brown.EDU) Organization: Brown University System Environment: University campus with central server and 5-10,000 potential users, mostly mac and pc's in both private and public environments, some Unix workstations Why I am interested in NNRP: NNTP as it stands does not meet our user's needs for efficiency, private newsgroups, and archival/searching. NNRP Goals: Optimization for low-end machines and narrow bandwidth, archival mechanism, searching, private newsgroups ======================================================= Joshua Cole Organization: InterCon Systems Corporation System Environment: Class B IP network with various node types (Macs, PC's and many flavors of UNIX). Why I am interested in NNRP: As a support engineer for a vendor that sells solutions for integrating Macs into IP networks, I feel that it's necessary to contribute my input into new protocols, specifically when they affect UI issues. Also, another engineer signed me up automatically. ;) NNRP Goals: Unknown. I'd like to see something that outlines the defiencies in NNTP that would make NNRP necessary.