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Hi all,

Here's my notes on getting this mod working fulling under medium volume....

I. Installation and Config

The installation and config instructions were fine.

II. Server Choices

The mod as it stands communicates with any news server (tested 5 different servers: INN, Leafnode, Leafnode+, Dnews, Hampster, and Rumormill).

Assessment:

INN: Too industrial strength, pain to configure... don't do it (I did and now I need therapy)

Leafnode and Leafnode+: Excellent and simple. Must install from source. Ability to limit initial draw of articles from up stream server. Operates in "suck" client mode only. This is GPL software, and is currently still maintained.

Dnews: Excellent and simple. Faster than Leafnode variations. However is expensive! $95.00 for a single concurrent connection- and the prices only climb from there....

Hampster: Forget it. I'm not even going into it. But it's old, slow, and unsupported.

RumorMill: Forget it, old, Slow, and unsupported. (However if ti did work it would be a great use for an old Mac you have laying around)

My final Choice:

Leafnode.

Why? Because Leafnode compiled flawlessly, added newsgroups flawlessly, is free, is GPL, has initial suck limits in place for new group additions, has limits for message size in place (keeps some idiot who posts a binary to a text group from screwing your server and forums up, and runs on linux- which saved me a win2k license....

III. Issues with the script itself.

The mod itself works brilliantly, with the exception of the following issues:

1. If you pull a text group directly from a server with a high retention (Like 4000 articles), the download will *timeout* (Along with the php script), leaving some house keeping things un-done in regard to the import of the messages. One of these things is fairly severe, in that when the gateway script is run again, the entire newsgroup will be pulled *again*- since the message numbers are not update when the import fails.

2. There are no size limitations in place in the script proper to avoid the importing of a multipart CD image. Just today, I had to reconfigure my local newsserver to avoid a binary that was posted to comp.sys.mac.games.action- the binary should not have been there, but 680 megs of usenet posts ended up in my sql database. This is a mess and not fun.

3. It appears that the mod doesn't poll for an initial group download in the same way as a standard newsreader.

Three separate caching servers (dnews, Leafnode, and Leafnode+) all did not recognize the poll to an empty newsgroup, and subsequently download the articles. I had to subscribe to the newsgroup first in Outlook, then the messages would download normally.

While I have not had a chance to check the code for this function, I will do so in the coming days and find out if I can isolate a mod for the mod to make sure that a subscription in the control panel will be enough to trigger the newsgroup to go active.

IV. Final config- how to make it workable....

My solution consists of:

1. a suck feed from http://www.newshosting.com ($25.00 a month- 500 MB a day)

2. Internally configured Leafnode server with initial post fetch, and size limits in place.

3. CBQ (Class Based Queing) implemented on a Linux firewall to keep usenet traffic from affecting other servers on my system.

Essentially, the Leafnode server is throttled to 56k of incoming bandwidth, and the forums server connects to it via 10/100 Full Duplex Ethernet.

It was at this final config that the usenet section at ASWP.net became usable with any kind of volume. It was a big job, and very intense in the level of tweaking needed, but we have it classified as rock solid at this point.

So here's the short list of what you need to make it workable:

1. Sucking usenet server, which you have control over, or that someone is willing to alter the config for.

2. A fast semi-dedicated server box with a lot of disk space.

3. The ability to throttle your bandwidth.

Well, anyhow- thats my take on it....