some nntp-nov-gap timings

[Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no>]

>>>>> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@ifi.uio.no>:

> Steinar Bang <sb@metis.no> writes:
>> Would a more formalized test, with timings for groups with different
>> characteristics, and different settings of nntp-nov-gap, be of
>> interest?

> It would indeed.  The current default is just something I picked
> without testing at all.

>> If so: what numbers should I primarily look at?

> The length of time it takes to enter the groups?  :-)

I meant: "which function should I look at in elp-results"

> Well, varying `nntp-nov-gap' over a range from 1 to 40 to nil, and
> trying to select groups that have lots of articles and few articles,
> and selecting groups that have lots of read articles in between the
> unread articles.

Well you're not getting that, because doing these variations manually
just takes too much time.  But I got the following numbers today, when
accessing the foreign group
	nntp+news.eunet.no:no.alt.motorsykler
over a 64kb line.  The numbers are the value of nntp-nov-gap, followed
by the time used by gnus-group-read-group, with an average of 5 tries.
The group at this point, had 3 unread articles, and 120 ticked
articles. 

nntp-nov-gap	average time used (sec.)
1		20.80
5		21.09
10		33.23
20		55.16
30		63.16
40		74.73

I have no idea of the load on the NNTP server, or the general network
traffic at the time of measurement.  I guess that a more fair
measurement, would involve more averages, with the different values of
nntp-nov-gap interleaved.

Maybe something for some emacs lisp guru to hack together?


- Steinar