Terry Collins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> uttered the following thing:
> Ben Buxton wrote:
>
> It sounds a great idea, especially having all my mail documentation
> resources at work for immediate research.
>
>
> > What would be the limitations/weaknesses/etc that would make
> > this a bad idea?
>
> Security - how secure is nntp protocol? With some messages it doesn't
> matter about how public they are, others you might want to keep very
> confidential.
Well, it's no less secure than SMTP. The servers would of course
use username/password authentication between them, but this could
be modified to be an MD5 key or something. Same goes for
the clients (MUA).
> If this can include an encryption/pgp hook, this may reduce/remove the
> problem in both transmission interception and who reads it.
If you're worried about that, then perhaps IPSec might do
the trick. But I'm guessing the NNTP server could easily encrypt
messages across the pipe.
> Syncing over a dial up - how do you only fetch certain messages? (fiddle
> active files?) Thinking that you might only want to fetch
> important/relevant messages at certain locations (i.e. requested
> config/source files at a client site).
Hmmm....well your nntp servers could be configured to only
accept messages in certain mailboxes ('groups'). So if one
server in a group is only for work related messages, all the
other servers can be configured to only send <user>.work
or whatever the hierarchy is.
Of course, you can also config the (hacked) MUA to connect
across the dialup network like a regular newsreading client
rather than getting the full NNTP feed. that way, it behaves
much like an IMAP client.
> Data charges - this would be okay if it is not going to incur data
> charges. There might be some need for as flexible feed configuration as
> possible.
Exactly as most (all?) news servers already do...you choose both what
to send to other servers, and what to accept from them, on a per
server basis. Normal NNTP servers support it, theres no reason
why this cant have something whereby messages can be selectively
delivered, and placeholders sent instead for example with
stripped out binaries.
Remember, it wouldnt be a full news server, but rather a modified
version of the protoclol, probably not listening on port 119. Custom
commands and slight differences would be in there, but by
attempting to stick to the main protocol methods of NNTP, it
becomes much easier to understand, debug, etc.
> Firewall - yet another hole in the home/corporate firewall.
You win some, you lose some...code it properly and there
will be no holes :)
> clients - ?
Now *that* is where the interesting bit is...trying to get
this done automatically with a client. Some major hacking is
required.
But to start with, it'd be simple to create a wrapper that
gave an IMAP interface, so (almost) any mail client
will work. But that would limit you to read and delete.
Having sent items and saving items probably isnt supported in
IMAP.
Not a bad start though, a "full" client would be able to
do the works, such as automatically moving messages across
"folders", saving sent messages, etc.
> --
> Terry Collins {:-)}}} Ph(02) 4627 2186 Fax(02) 4628 7861
> email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] www: http://www.woa.com.au
> Wombat Outdoor Adventures <Bicycles, Books, Computers, GIS>
>
> "People without trees are like fish without clean water"
> --
> SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/
> More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
--
Ben Buxton - Random Network Person
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/
More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
