[ADMIN] Please use the new server!

NOTE: If this message is displayed, you're using the old server machine of
      News.CIS.DFN.DE / News.FU-Berlin.DE. The new IP number is distributed
      via the DNS system since yesterday and should be well known in the
      meantime.

      Please check the configuration of your newsreader to make sure that
      you are not using the old IP address. If you do, please just use the
      name of the newsserver (News.CIS.DFN.DE or News.FU-Berlin.DE) or the
      new IP number (see announcement below), should necessity require it.
      If you don't use the IP number, please contact your network
      administrator and ask him to reload the DNS database.


News.CIS.DFN.DE with new soft- and hardware
===========================================

News.CIS.DFN.DE, one of the most important newsservers in Germany, moved to
a new machine. Since yesterday evening the service runs on a new server with
clearly higher performance and larger resources.

Switching Process
-----------------
The migration had been prepared extensively and took place transparently for
the users. The name remained unchanged and is being propagated by all DNS
servers since yesterday. Great importance was attached to the fact that the
numbering of the articles on the old and the new server is identical. That
means that none of our users, who observed our specifications, has to make
any adjustments at their configuration files.

Hardware
--------
Now a Silicon Graphics Origin 2000 with four processors of the type R12000,
1536 MB RAM as well as 80 GB disk is used. The network connection is
implemented over an Gigabit Ethernet interface.

Software
--------
As newsserver software INN (InterNetNews) in the version 2.3 with CNFS
(Cyclic News File System) is used, distributing of the articles is done by
the program innfeed (version 1.0). The daemon which is responsible for
reading NetNews (nnrpd) has been strongly modified, in order to meet the
special requirements of News.CIS.DFN.DE, e.g. the user validation.

Performance
-----------
The six years old machine, on which the service until yesterday was offered,
though a high end product at the time of acquisition, however couldn't meet
the requirements all time any longer - particularly during the last months.
The result were irregularly and differently violently occurring load
problems, which could become apparent at the connecting process particularly.

The new system is especially tuned to handle a large number of readers.
Modern hard disks and bus systems assure a high data flow-rate, supported by
CNFS, the file system developed especially for newsservers. That leads to
the fact that delays due to disk I/O belong to the past.

New Features
------------
The described performance problems of the old system were the motivation
to start the new server as soon as possible - with same functionality, but
clearly increased performance and more storage capacity.

Further work is in progress for additional improvements of functionality.
An important part of that is to provide the users with an easy to operate
web interface for maintenance of their account data. The innovations will
take place gradually in the next months and will cover among other things:

- modifications of account data (E-Mail, password) by the user via WWW
- listing of own articles via WWW
- canceling of own articles via WWW
- forced Path entry: configurable
- get non local parts for unique Message IDs
- access to flame groups: configurable
- extended protection against abuse
- migration of the data base to MySQL

Expire Times
------------
The new storage procedure for postings does not permit specification of the
retention time in days any longer. Instead it is determined by the
administrator how much disk space is available for certain classes of
hierarchies or newsgroups. This space is always used completely, which means
that the oldest article of an area is deleted only when space is needed for
a new article.

The current expire times at News.CIS.DFN.DE are:

150 days  bln.*,comp.*,control.*,de.*,freshmeat.*,gnu.*,humanities.*,news.*,
          school.*,schule.*,sci.*
 30 days  at.*,bionet.*,bit.*,ch.*,fido.*,info.*,k12.*,maus.*,muc.*,rec.*,
          soc.*,talk.*,vmsnet.*,z-netz.*
 15 days  alt.*,ar.*,aus.*,be.*,biz.*,borland.*,chinese.*,cna.*,cz.*,dk.*,es.*,
          esp.*,fj.*,fr.*,ger.*,gov.*,han.*,hepnet.*,hk.*,hun.*,it.*,japan.*,
          microsoft.*,misc.*,netscape.*,nl.*,no.*,pl.*,pt.*,relcom.*,se.*,
          sfnet.*,sg.*,sk.*,staroffice.*,swnet.*,tw.*,uk.*
  2 days  control.cancel,misc.jobs.offered,news.lists.filters

Due to the migration from one server to the other the fill grade at the
starting point is about 25 days, i.e. articles which arrived before 7th
October 1999 cannot be accessed any longer. 

New IP number
-------------
NOTE: Into most programs *NO* IP number must be entered (but the server
      name "News.CIS.DFN.DE" or "News.FU-Berlin.DE").

In some special configurations however the specification of a IP number is
necessary. So far this number was "160.45.4.4", but now it changed. The new
number is "130.133.1.4".

New Path Entry
--------------
Anyone using a program, which operates as independent newsservers or uses
appropriate functionalities, must guarantee that it does not return articles
to News.CIS.DFN.DE, which were already received over this server. For that
purpose the client software checks whether the Path line already contains
the unique entry which indicates the server News.CIS.DFN.DE.

So far the entry was "fu-berlin.de". At the new server "uni-berlin.de" is
used. Articles, which are not generated locally still have the old entry
"fu-berlin.de" in their Path line, because before reaching the user-server
these articles passed the feeder-server, for which that entry is now
reserved exclusively.

Contact
-------

Anyone who wants to register with News.CIS.DFN.DE should follow the
instructions at

	http://news.cis.dfn.de/ .

Technically questions about the server and requests to add more newsgroups
can be addressed to "new...@fu-berlin.de".

Registration and use of this NetNews service are free of charge. It is a
service of DFN-CIS (Center for Information Services) located at the computer
center of Freie Universit�t Berlin, Germany. DFN-CIS is supported by DFN
with funds from BMBF. 

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