Subject: Poor performance when reading newsgroups.

From: Vinod Kutty <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Jun 1997 16:36:06 -0500

Hi:

I'm experiencing very poor performance with pine (tried both 3.93 and
3.95) when reading newsgroups with about 100 articles or more. It takes
several minutes to scroll through each screenful of about 25 article
headers (on a SPARCserver 1000 and an IBM RS/6000 J40)

The last time I looked at the source (a while ago), it was not clear
where the nntp commands were (if at all). Can someone point me to
technical documentation on how pine reads newsgroups using a news server
(i.e. not using local collections)?

I have not had any problems with Netscape Navigator/Communicator or tin.
I strongly suspect "misbehaviour" on pine's interaction with our NNTP
server (running INND 1.5.1).

Thanks,
Vinod Kutty.

---

From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 11:17:21 +0100 (BST)

Hmmm.... This _may_ not be a problem with Pine per se...

When compiling the INN 1.5.1 software there is a configuration option in
its config/config.data file called "LIKE_PULLERS".  As distributed this is
set to "DONT".  If INN is compiled with this setting it lets you read 100
articles within a given NNTP session.  It then continues to let you read,
but introduces a one second delay between articles.  This is so that
Systems Administrators can reduce the impact of reading sessions from
software packages which try to "suck" a newsfeed from their server.

Note that the delay is introduced after reading 100 articles within an
NNTP *session* (ie, not within any one newsgroup).  So after a session has
been used to read 100 articles things slow down dramatically.

You would not notice this effect with Navigator if, for example, it
started off a separate NNTP session (hence with its own fresh 100 article
limit) more often than Pine does.  (For example Navigator might be idiotic 
enough to start a new session for each article it reads, or for
each newsgroup you open, rather than re-using your existing NNTP
connection ... I really don't know.)

You may like to ask your News Administrator if they compiled INN with the
LIKE_PULLERS option set to DONT.  If they did then you might be able to
persuade them to change this to DO and recompile it, or else to edit the
source code and increase the 100 article limit 10, say, 1000.

Cheers,

-- 
Mike Brudenell                                         <[email-masked]>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Computing Service, University of York, Heslington, York, YO1 5DD, UK
Tel: +44-1904-433811  FAX: +44-1904-433740  http://www.york.ac.uk/~pmb1/

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---

From: Vinod Kutty <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 11:38:48 -0500 (CDT)

Actually, I am the co-administrator of our news server, and my colleague
already tried this, hence my post to the group.

I think I should double check the installation to make sure everything is
where it should be.

Thanks,
Vinod Kutty.
University of Illinois at Chicago.

---

From: Abhay Roy <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 01:10:58 -0700

On 3 Jun 1997, Mike Brudenell wrote:

+ Hmmm.... This _may_ not be a problem with Pine per se...
+ 
+ When compiling the INN 1.5.1 software there is a configuration option in
+ its config/config.data file called "LIKE_PULLERS".  As distributed this is
+ set to "DONT".  If INN is compiled with this setting it lets you read 100
+ articles within a given NNTP session.  It then continues to let you read,
+ but introduces a one second delay between articles.  This is so that
+ Systems Administrators can reduce the impact of reading sessions from
+ software packages which try to "suck" a newsfeed from their server.

Nice explanation.
 
+ Note that the delay is introduced after reading 100 articles within an
+ NNTP *session* (ie, not within any one newsgroup).  So after a session has
+ been used to read 100 articles things slow down dramatically.

I am seeing it right now (with 3.96). All I am doing it loading up a
newsgroup with some 10,000 articles unread, and just pushing the space bar
to go the next page (my page length is abour 45 lines or so). First page
display is fast, and just after (probably) second page, things slow down a 
lot. All I am trying it to lookup the header, and then probably read a few
of the articles.
 
I use TIN more frequently than pine to read news ((for multiple reasons).
And I have *never* seen any such delays. So I will rule our the server 
immediately. Now that leaves the client. So I will try to look at the code.
(Or probably some developer would have noticed ?)

Regards,
-Roy-