UUCP Networks

[Kyonshi]

I was looking into UUCP because I just installed INN but right now it's
still behind a NAT so I don't think peering is possible. And while
looking at it I got fascinated by the whole UUCP topic. But one thing I
was just thinking about: are those UUCP connections you have limited to
news from particular servers, or are there more people actually using
e.g. the mailing capabilities of the protocol? I saw it referenced as a
hobbyist thing, but that still means there must be some other people to
interact with, right? Are there still active UUCP networks in use?

[lkh]

Maybe subnet is still active? https://subnet.sub.net/english.html

Many years ago I asked for a feed, but never got around to actually
installing it.

cheers ;-)

lkh

--
/me types:
$ sudo pacman -S uucp

[Julieta Shem]

In this very group, check message

<slrnsir6ri.2...@slrnh.complete.org>

It might interest you.

[Grant Taylor]

On 2/1/24 17:57, Kyonshi wrote:
> I was looking into UUCP because I just installed INN but right now it's
> still behind a NAT so I don't think peering is possible.

Peering works perfectly fine through NAT as long as you can arrange for
traffic to an outside IP & port combination to make it into the news server.

NNTP is just a TCP stream without needing anything special.

I'm replying to your post from a news server that is behind a NAT.

> And while looking at it I got fascinated by the whole UUCP topic. But
> one thing I was just thinking about: are those UUCP connections you
> have limited to news from particular servers, or are there more people
> actually using e.g. the mailing capabilities of the protocol?

You're talking about two different hings.

UUCP is able to carry news articles in general, those articles can be
from Usenet (or other news network(s)) at large or local to the news server.

I believe there are people that carry email (both local and to the
Internet at large) via UUCP. Though I don't have any recent examples to
point at.

> I saw it referenced as a hobbyist thing, but that still means there
> must be some other people to interact with, right? Are there still
> active UUCP networks in use?

I have a few systems linked with each other in UUCP, but nothing is
flowing over those links any more.



--
Grant. . . .

[Marco Moock]

On 02.02.2024 um 00:57 Uhr Kyonshi wrote:

> I was looking into UUCP because I just installed INN but right now
> it's still behind a NAT so I don't think peering is possible.

It can be done via NAT, but if IPv6 is available, simply use that,
maybe via a free HE.net tunnel that gives you a static /48 subnet.

> And while looking at it I got fascinated by the whole UUCP topic. But
> one thing I was just thinking about: are those UUCP connections you
> have limited to news from particular servers, or are there more people
> actually using e.g. the mailing capabilities of the protocol?

Some maybe use it, but I haven't received an email with such headers
yet.
sendmail supports that, so have a look at it.
It also supports SMTP and various other protocols, so you can contact
via SMTP too.

> I saw it referenced as a hobbyist thing, but that still means there
> must be some other people to interact with, right? Are there still
> active UUCP networks in use?

UUCP over TCP-IP is being used. Maybe some still use UUCP via serial
line, but that is tricky via VoIP.

Eternal-september.org provides news via UUCP and 7 sites make use of it.
https://www.eternal-september.org/stats/news-notice.2024.02.03-04.00.02.html#batcher_elapsed

--
kind regards
Marco

Send spam to muel...@cartoonies.org

[Martin Burmester]

Hi Kyonshi,

Am 02.02.2024 um 00:57 schrieb Kyonshi:
> I was looking into UUCP because I just installed INN but right now it's
> still behind a NAT so I don't think peering is possible. And while
> looking at it I got fascinated by the whole UUCP topic.

Uucp is a good option in that case. If you would like a usenet feed via
uucp please contact me via mail.

> But one thing I
> was just thinking about: are those UUCP connections you have limited to
> news from particular servers, or are there more people actually using
> e.g. the mailing capabilities of the protocol? I saw it referenced as a
> hobbyist thing, but that still means there must be some other people to
> interact with, right? Are there still active UUCP networks in use?

While there is no global uucp network anymore, there are isolated
installations where a system acts as a gateway between uucp and nntp or
smtp so you can in fact use mail and news quite normally via uucp.

Cheers
Martin

[Julieta Shem]

Grant Taylor <gta...@tnetconsulting.net> writes:

> On 2/1/24 17:57, Kyonshi wrote:
>> I was looking into UUCP because I just installed INN but right now
>> it's still behind a NAT so I don't think peering is possible.
>
> Peering works perfectly fine through NAT as long as you can arrange
> for traffic to an outside IP & port combination to make it into the
> news server.
>
> NNTP is just a TCP stream without needing anything special.

Question---if I have access to the Internet, say TCP access, why would I
use UUCP and not NNTP directly?

[Grant Taylor]

On 2/3/24 17:54, Julieta Shem wrote:
> Question---if I have access to the Internet, say TCP access, why
> would I use UUCP and not NNTP directly?

That depends on your use case.

/Access/ /to/ the Internet is not the same thing as /being/ /on/ the
Internet. The latter means that others could have access to you while
the former does not imply the same thing.

E.g. access to the internet behind Carrier Grade NAT but others have a
dickens of a time getting to you.

So, you could initiate an outbound TCP connection to a central way point
and utilize UUCP to pull queued email / news / files that someone sent
to you.

Variations on this theme, one common one being IPv4 only host using UUCP
over TCP to exchange files with a dual stack host which also uses UUCP
over TCP to exchange files with an IPv6 only host. Thus the IPv4 only
and IPv6 only hosts can exchange files without worrying about the
underlying transport incompatibility.

Another common theme is that the TCP connection is transient or dynamic
such that it's annoying (at best) for someone to push things directly to
you with TCP while it's trivial the intermediate to queue things for you
to pull using UUCP at your convenience.



Grant. . . .

[Marco Moock]

On 03.02.2024 um 20:54 Uhr Julieta Shem wrote:

> Question---if I have access to the Internet, say TCP access, why
> would I use UUCP and not NNTP directly?

Because if you are an NNTP peer, you machine needs to be always online
and reachable.

Some crappy ISP don't provide a public IPv4 nor IPv6, so you can't be
reached from the outside.
Polling via UUCP is a way to circumvent that.

[Julieta Shem]

Marco Moock <mm+use...@dorfdsl.de> writes:

> On 03.02.2024 um 20:54 Uhr Julieta Shem wrote:
>
>> Question---if I have access to the Internet, say TCP access, why
>> would I use UUCP and not NNTP directly?
>
> Because if you are an NNTP peer, you machine needs to be always online
> and reachable.
>
> Some crappy ISP don't provide a public IPv4 nor IPv6, so you can't be
> reached from the outside.

Really? Or you mean they don't give users a static IP address? I
mean---do these ISPs keep you in a NAT'ed network? That's interesting.
I would sure hope that the service is very cheap then.

> Polling via UUCP is a way to circumvent that.

I need to study UUCP a bit to see how that matters. How does UUCP make
you reachable from the outside if you're in a NAT'ed network?

[Andy Valencia]

Julieta Shem <js...@yaxenu.org> writes:
> Really? Or you mean they don't give users a static IP address? I
> mean---do these ISPs keep you in a NAT'ed network? That's interesting.
> I would sure hope that the service is very cheap then.

Certainly some USA cell data networks do this, and I saw it with a rural
WISP. I haven't encountered it yet with urban broadband providers.

Andy Valencia
Home page: https://www.vsta.org/andy/
To contact me: https://www.vsta.org/contact/andy.html

[Andreas S. Kerber]

Julieta Shem <js...@yaxenu.org> wrote:
> Question---if I have access to the Internet, say TCP access, why would I
> use UUCP and not NNTP directly?

NNTP: upstream server is pushing articles to your NNTP server. This
requires your NNTP server to be reachable (preferably permanently).

UUCP: upstream server ist collecting articles in batches (specifically
for you) and you poll these batches when ever you want. Then you feed
these batched to your local NNTP server service instance.

back in the day, connecting to the internet was often metered by the
minute and you connected e.g through dial-up. most people did not have
a permanent (round the clock) internet connection back then, and UUCP
was a great and affordable way to send and receive email and network news.

[Marco Moock]

On 04.02.2024 um 11:46 Uhr Julieta Shem wrote:

> Marco Moock <mm+use...@dorfdsl.de> writes:
>
> > On 03.02.2024 um 20:54 Uhr Julieta Shem wrote:
> >
> >> Question---if I have access to the Internet, say TCP access, why
> >> would I use UUCP and not NNTP directly?
> >
> > Because if you are an NNTP peer, you machine needs to be always
> > online and reachable.
> >
> > Some crappy ISP don't provide a public IPv4 nor IPv6, so you can't
> > be reached from the outside.
>
> Really?

Yes, such ISPs exist, although only a small amount here in Germany.

> I would sure hope that the service is very cheap then.

IIRC no.

[Julieta Shem]

Interesting. But could all of this be done with NNTP? I mean---you
connect, pull it all with NNTP and disconnect. But I bet it's how
efficient the transfer are. It seems intuitive to me we can sort of
compact it all in a package, download, unpack and deliver it to the NNTP
server. Am I in the right direction here? Even without compression, it
seems more efficient to do it in one package.

[Andreas S. Kerber]

Julieta Shem <js...@yaxenu.org> wrote:
> Interesting. But could all of this be done with NNTP? I mean---you
> connect, pull it all with NNTP and disconnect. But I bet it's how
> efficient the transfer are. It seems intuitive to me we can sort of

Possibly there's some confusion here. NNTP (TRANIT mode = realtime
server to server "push" of news articles) and the READER mode of NNTP
when a client/reader is pulling articles from a NNTP server.

Usually transit mode is only allowed for explicitly defined peers and
upstreams.

reader/transit modes of NNTP are described in the RFC 3977:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3977#section-3.4.1

> efficient the transfer are. It seems intuitive to me we can sort of
> compact it all in a package, download, unpack and deliver it to the NNTP
> server. Am I in the right direction here? Even without compression, it

If someone only has reader permissions to a NNTP server, they could
use the "pullnews" software - I guess that matches the approach your
describing.

Here's a link to "pullnews":
https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/inn/docs-2.7/pullnews.html

[John Levine]

According to Andreas S. Kerber <a...@eb6.srv.ke3.speedkom.net>:

>If someone only has reader permissions to a NNTP server, they could
>use the "pullnews" software - I guess that matches the approach your
>describing.
>
>Here's a link to "pullnews":
>https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/inn/docs-2.7/pullnews.html

I use a similar program called suck. Works great.

--
Regards,
John Levine, jo...@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

[Grant Taylor]

On 2/4/24 08:46, Julieta Shem wrote:
> Really? Or you mean they don't give users a static IP address?
> I mean---do these ISPs keep you in a NAT'ed network? That's
> interesting. I would sure hope that the service is very cheap then.

ISPs providing a non-globally routed IP that they subsequently NAT out
to the world is called "Carrier Grade NAT" / "C.G.NAT" / "CGN" in the
circles that I travel in. It is somewhat common in ISPs of various
sizes, particularly on residential access connections where it usually
doesn't cause a problem.

Most people want /access/ /to/ the Internet while others want to /be/
/on/ the Internet.

> I need to study UUCP a bit to see how that matters. How does UUCP
> make you reachable from the outside if you're in a NAT'ed network?

UUCP doesn't make you reachable per se. Rather UUCP means that the
outside world sends email to an always on system which queues it for you
with something like UUCP. Then you periodically connect to the system
and pull down the messages.

In some ways, UUCP is sort of like a mailbox akin to POP3, but it
supports a LOT more features and multiple addresses with no additional
effort than the 1st address.

[Grant Taylor]

On 2/4/24 11:05, Julieta Shem wrote:
> Interesting. But could all of this be done with NNTP? I mean---you
> connect, pull it all with NNTP and disconnect. But I bet it's how
> efficient the transfer are. It seems intuitive to me we can sort of
> compact it all in a package, download, unpack and deliver it to the NNTP
> server. Am I in the right direction here? Even without compression, it
> seems more efficient to do it in one package.

NNTP is really two dialects of a common protocol. The different
dialects have different requirements and capabilities.

NNTP peering is done with (near) real-time push from the upstream server
to the downstream server. Meaning that the downstream server must be
online and accessible for the upstream to be able to push to it.

NNTP client is done with an asynchronous pull from the upstream server
to the downstream server.

NNTP peers are all push and (near) real time. -- You can get into
strange behaviors / side effects of the protocol wherein you might be
able to get an upstream peer to re-try pushing articles to you thinking
there was transient connection issue, but this should not be relied on
and is almost certainly going to fail at some point, with the only
questions being when and how spectacularly.

You might be able to convince a peer to do a hybrid approach wherein
they accept pushes from you as a normal NNTP peer however they don't
actually /feed/ you anything and instead rely on you to pull using some
sort of pullnews / suck / etc. utility. -- This would be extremely
atypical and I doubt many news masters would be willing to do it.

If you want to be an NNTP peer, you need to make arrangements to be
online to receive (near) real time pushes -or- use something like UUCP
to do batch transfers.

N.B. I'm saying "near" real time to account for a few second delay as
articles come into a server and are distributed to peers.

[John Levine]

According to Grant Taylor <gta...@tnetconsulting.net>:

>You might be able to convince a peer to do a hybrid approach wherein
>they accept pushes from you as a normal NNTP peer however they don't
>actually /feed/ you anything and instead rely on you to pull using some
>sort of pullnews / suck / etc. utility. -- This would be extremely
>atypical and I doubt many news masters would be willing to do it.

That's what I do with eternal september and have done with other news peers.

I just set up a peering agreement and ask them not to send me
anything. They're fine with me pulling the articles I want.

[John Goerzen]

Hi,

I have some on my website that may help:

https://www.complete.org/uucp/

UUCP is an asynchronous transport. Atop UUCP, you can send and receive files,
request remote execution of commands, etc. You can supply a stdin to the remote
execution of commands, and it is this capability that is used to send email and
news across UUCP (traditionally by executing the remote commands rmail and
rnews).

UUCP was traditionally used over serial links, but can also run over TCP links
and pipes (such as ssh). UUCP does not provide native encryption or
cryptographic authentication of data.

There is no need to use bang paths with emails over UUCP. UUCP is just a
transport, and you can build what you need with domain routing tables in your
MTA.

These days, I recommend NNCP, the successor to UUCP.
https://www.complete.org/nncp/ NNCP is always fully end-to-end encrypted, can
use everything from TCP to USB drives as transport, and can be fairly easily
dropped in place of UUCP in both email and news contexts.
https://www.complete.org/nncp-concepts/

I run the quux.org NNCP public relay, which is to my knowledge the only
operational UUCP or NNCP network today.
https://www.complete.org/quux-org-nncp-public-relay/

quux.org is a well-connected Usenet transit system. I also offer Usenet feeds
over NNCP. https://www.complete.org/quux-org-usenet-nntp-and-nncp-peer/

- John