Re: [Pan-users] Is it possible to have more than 4 simultaneous connections?

[Duncan]

On Fri 01 Aug 2003 17:07, Randy Pratt posted as excerpted below:
>
> I'm running 4.8-STABLE FreeBSD with pan-0.11.4_1 .

That's OLD!!  <g>

> I have a 1.5Mbit DSL connection and it would be nice if I could increase
> the number of simultaneous connections above 4.
>
> Is this possible in this or the newer Pan2 ?  If so, any links/pointers
> would be appreciated.

The PAN developers work very hard to keep PAN GNKSA compliant, and are rightly 
proud of PAN's status as the only 100% GNKSA compliant (on both shoulds and 
musts) news reader for *ix.  One of the GNKSA requirements is that newreaders 
"play nice" with the servers they connect to, by not opening so many 
connections it could be viewed as a DoS.  PAN's shipped limit, therefore, is 
and will remain 4 connections per server.

That said, there are at least two possible workarounds, depending on whether 
you are willing to change the open source code and recompile or not.  (If you 
choose the change method, it will of course require you to change each 
version b4 compiling, but as you are still on the pre-GTK2 port 0.11.4, you 
obviously don't have to worry about THAT to often. <g>)

If you don't mind getting your hands a bit dirty in the code, pointers for 
changing that have been posted to the list b4, if you don't feel like just 
delving in and finding where to change it yourself.  One source for such 
archived posts, if a googlize fails to turn it up, is the gmane.org list2news 
archive.

Or..  simply set up a second server.. Nothing prevents the second PAN logical 
server from actually pointing at the same physical server as the first 
logical server does.  This will give you up to eight connections, altho since 
PAN only displays one server at a time to work with, you will have to set up 
d/ls on the one, then switch to the other to set up additional downloads.

A helpful hint..  Newer PANs use the gnet library to manage their connections.  
For me, this has been a big help, as PAN will now automatically use its four 
connections/server to d/l all on the same task (provided there are at least 
four individual parts to d/l in the task, of course).  Thus, while formerly, 
one had to set up individual tasks for each connection in ordered to enable 
multiple concurrent connections, that is no longer the case, up to the four 
configured connections per server, of course.

What I used to do previous to the gnet versions I am sure you've already 
figured out..  Assuming you want to work on one newsgroup at a time, you set 
up tasks for individual segments of the group, rather than the entire group 
at once.  With just two connections, you can set one to d/l top to bottom 
(however you have it sorted), and the other bottom to top, so the tasks meet 
in the middle and complete faster.  One can use the same technique with 
multiple logical servers, with a modern gnet version of PAN, setting one to 
d/l from one end, using its four connections, the other to d/l from the other 
end, so again, they meet in the middle.

Oh. something else useful for heavy d/lers since the GTK2 port..  The PAN 
cache can now be set up to 20 gigs.  That was my suggestion, as I typically 
run a four gig cache, and had problems with the max one gig cache previous to 
this.  This allows multiple multi-parts to be in cache at once, without parts 
being deleted b4 saving, so one doesn't have to directly save each multipart 
immediately to prevent parts of it being lost when the next one is d/led.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin