[HECnet] Re: Usenet

During my postgraduate days, I ran ANU NEWS on our VAX/VMS systems and we peered large parts of the hierarchy. I think even back then we were exclusively NNTP over TCP/IP. I have a vague memory that I wrote a multi-threaded NNTP server for ANU but it was using the CMUTEK TCP/IP product so it was all done with QIO and ASTs – none of this weird select stuff of Unix sockets. With Google groups being hit by 1000s of spam messages a day – astrology, voodoo, death spells, etc. – I’m tempted to get ANU NEWS installed and running again, probably SIMH-hosted VAX OpenVMS and, as above, peer some of the groups. Disc space and bandwidth aren’t an issue and I’d like to see NNTP running over DECnet…. And I’m more familiar with ANU NEWS’s SMG interface than I ever was with the likes of tin and rm. Actually, wanting to do this has less to do with Google’s mess and more about nostalgia. If/when it’s all up and running, I’ll consider getting it running on some real Alpha or IA64 hardware, probably based mostly on which has the lower power consumption. Just wondering if anybody else is doing/done something similar.