From: Clive D.W. Feather (clive@demon.net)
Date: Tue Jan 11 2000 - 10:46:08 CST
Charles Lindsey said:
> Yes, but that was before the days of "relay only" agents that do not even
> keep an active file. Can someone explain to me more precisely what these
> agents do?
Basically they handle the fan-out part of relaying in as efficient a manner
as possible. A simplistic design might be something like this:
* Accept a connection from a peer. Accept all the articles that it throws
at you (and that are not in your history file) up to some limit, say when
a 100 Mb buffer has filled. Close the connection.
* For all other peers in turn, open a connection to that peer and offer it
all the articles in turn. Close the connection and try another peer. When
all peers have been dealt with, or after a timeout, free the buffer.
-- Clive D.W. Feather | Work: <clive@demon.net> | Tel: +44 20 8371 1138 Internet Expert | Home: <clive@davros.org> | Fax: +44 20 8371 1037 Demon Internet | WWW: http://www.davros.org | Mobile: +44 7973 377646