From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/5206 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: gsstark@MIT.EDU (Greg Stark) Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: Connecting to a newsserver with nntp. Date: 21 Feb 1996 17:29:24 -0500 Organization: Massachvsetts Institvte of Technology Sender: gsstark@fierce-bad-rabbit.MIT.EDU Message-ID: References: <9602211956.AA09060@tito.cygnus.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035145845 32127 80.91.224.250 (20 Oct 2002 20:30:45 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 20:30:45 +0000 (UTC) Cc: pp@pfawww.pp.se, ding@ifi.uio.no Return-Path: ding-request@ifi.uio.no Original-Received: from ifi.uio.no (ifi.uio.no [129.240.64.2]) by deanna.miranova.com (8.7.3/8.6.9) with SMTP id PAA18516 for ; Wed, 21 Feb 1996 15:10:53 -0800 Original-Received: from MIT.EDU (PACIFIC-CARRIER-ANNEX.MIT.EDU [18.69.0.28]) by ifi.uio.no with SMTP (8.6.11/ifi2.4) id for ; Wed, 21 Feb 1996 23:30:15 +0100 Original-Received: from FIERCE-BAD-RABBIT.MIT.EDU by MIT.EDU with SMTP id AA13513; Wed, 21 Feb 96 17:29:03 EST Original-Received: by fierce-bad-rabbit.MIT.EDU (5.57/4.7) id AA19720; Wed, 21 Feb 96 17:29:27 -0500 Original-To: eichin@cygnus.com In-Reply-To: eichin@cygnus.com's message of Wed, 21 Feb 96 14:56:18 EST Original-Lines: 22 X-Mailer: September Gnus v0.39/Emacs 19.30 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:5206 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:5206 There are lots of problems with trying to determine if the host is up through some other mechinism like ping. Trusting two different protocols to agree about whether the host is available is going to be inherently unreliable. Ping itself is extrememely non-portable, it works differently under different versions of Unix, and isn't available at all for some operating systems. It's also not clear how long to wait for the ping response. The same arguments that justify(?) making the TCP timeout so large hold for ICMP packets. If Gnus has to wait for your modem to dial in an initiate a PPP connection it could well take 30+ seconds before the first ping gets through. I'm not sure why Linux thought the traditional 60 seconds was inadequate, but there's no reason to think those arguments don't hold in this case. The real answer regarding C-g is to implement asynchronous backend interfaces. Then Gnus can initiate connections to the nntp backend and your mail backend and allow you to read your mail while the nntp backend is still waiting to time out. Lars has already indicated that this is in the cards for Red Gnus. (Right Lars?) greg