NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol) is a protocol used for the distribution, retrieval, and storage of articles posted in Usenet newsgroups. An NNTP server is a server that implements this protocol and serves as a repository for articles posted by users and feeds them to other servers on the Usenet network.
Here’s how an NNTP server works:
1. Client authentication: When a user wants to access an NNTP server, they must first authenticate themselves with a username and password. This is necessary to prevent unauthorized access to the server.
1. Posting articles: Once authenticated, the user can post new articles to the server. The articles are typically sent using the NNTP protocol, which provides error checking and data compression.
1. Article storage: The NNTP server stores the articles in a database or file system. The server may also index the articles for faster searching and retrieval.
1. Article retrieval: Clients can retrieve articles from the NNTP server using various methods such as searching by keyword, browsing newsgroups or retrieving specific articles by message ID.
1. Article propagation: NNTP servers routinely exchange news feeds with other servers to ensure that new articles are distributed to all servers in the network. This process is called article propagation.
Overall, an NNTP server serves as a hub for storing, retrieving and sharing articles on the Usenet network.
