TE), you can radically simplify matters by running INND in stand-alone mode. BYTE's public and private newsgroups originally worked this way.
We had some pro
blems, though. First, our corporate firewall wouldn't let NNTP through. Then that got fixed, but bandwidth constraints made it hard to use NNTP effectively. (NNTP is connection-oriented and thus more sensitive to marginal network conditions than stateless HTTP is.) So I reluctantly got into the replication business. I started using NNTP feeds to mirror our world-visible (i.e., outside) servers to a set of firewall-protected (i.e., inside) servers. When working at home or on the road, we can use an outside server. From any of our three primary intranet-linked offices, we can use the corresponding inside server. Replication keeps everything in sync.
Despite my trepidation, this scheme was easy to set up (
see the screen
) and has worked reliably. Now that our firewall and bandwidth problems are solved, I'll probably turn off replication. As the administrator of all this stuff, I like to minimize the number of moving parts. But I'm glad to have added NNTP replication to my arsenal. I ma
y need it again someday.
screen_link (35 Kbytes)
When you need to mirror one server to another, you appreciate how both Collabra and INS hide the details.
To Replicate or Not to Replicate?
