[Pan-users] Re: Too many connections error

[Duncan]

Ron Pepper posted
<address@hidden>, excerpted
below,  on Thu, 06 Apr 2006 22:04:21 -0700:

> Got this error when selecting more than 4 binaries to download in
> Pan:<br><br>sbcglobal handshake failed: 400 Too Many Connections [Members
> allows 3 per host/0 per feed (0 == nolimit)] (Twister v2.1.1.371)<br><br>I
> don't think it's an sbc limit because I can select a much larger number
> from a mac on the same network running another newreader. I searched the
> Pan archive and found reference to this issue, but didn't find the
> solution. Could someone point me in the right direction?
> <br><br>Thanx,<br>rp<br>__

First, please turn of the HTML.  PAN doesn't do HTML for a reason!  (I
understand you may not have been aware it was posting that way, that's
why I'm asking.)

As for the error...

PAN, unlike many newsreaders (probably including the other newsreader you
tested), makes more than one connection to the server at a time.  In
accordance with accepted norms (see the GNKSA link on the PAN home page),
it can make use of up to four connections at once, to each configured
server.

You can, however, configure the number of connections allowed for each
server.  I'm not running the 0.9x series yet, but once you understand how
it works if you are running it you should hopefully be able to find the
settings there, too.  In PAN 0.14.x, select Tools, News Servers, then your
news server, and hit open.  In the resulting dialog, set the connections
limit appropriately and OK back out.  You can set it to use all three
allowed connections, or set it lower, say two connections, if you want to
be able to run that single connection reader on your Mac at the same time.

Note that if you set it to the max allowed connections, you may still
occasionally get errors, if there is network congestion or something and
connections are going stale.  PAN may timeout the stale connection before
the server does, and start trying a new connection.  If that happens,
you'll get the error until the stale connection times out on the server as
well.  If your internet connection is bad enough to experience this issue
regularly, consider setting PAN to a lower number, say two instead of
three connections, or only one, so it won't try so many connections at
once.

...

The reason for multiple connections is that some servers limit the speed
of each connection, but allow several.  Whether the server(s) you use are
this way or not I can't say, but if they are, and you have an internet
connection faster than the limit on one news server connection, using two
or more connections to the same server increases your download speed.  On
dialup, this is seldom an issue, of course, because dialup modems are slow
enough internet connections that a single news server connection probably
maxes out the internet connection.  With internet broadband connections of
several Mbps, however, it's not unusual for a news server to cap
connection speeds to something lower than your maximum internet connection
speed, so running more than one news connection increases your total
thruput even if each connection is still limited.

If your internet connection is slower than the cap on the news server
connection, or your news server doesn't cap speeds per connection, than
you are better off just telling PAN to use a single connection to the
server, since more connections uses more resources and if one
connection gives you max speed already, why bother with more?

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html