Tutorial 8: The Network Connection List
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Contents: Network Overview Aborting Network IO Displayable Info Summary
Network Overview

 NewsRog can manage multiple simultaneous connections to a news server (or even to multiple news servers). For example, batch downloading articles from one group while browsing another might use two network connections. NewsRog is generally smart about reusing idle network connections, so the minimum number needed is created at any given time.

Unlike most other lists in NewsRog, items are not manually added to the Network Connection list. NewsRog adds them itself when connections are created. You can neither create nor delete them yourself.

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Network Connection Commands

The network list window looks like this. The button icons at the top have been explained in a previous tutorial. As you can see in the above window, NewsRog is capable of high transfer speeds over standard modems if modem compression is used to it's maximum effectiveness. Speeds of over 11 Kb/sec are attainable in some cases with a standard 56 Kb/s modem.

Other commands available here are:

  • Disconnect - Disconnects the selected network connections. Any operations that started those connections will be aborted.

  • Disconnect All - Disconnects all the open network connections, and aborts the operations that started them..

Note that most operations that start network connections provide their own abort feature local to that command. For example, in the group window, the abort button will abort group specific network connections for that particular group.

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Displayable Data The network connection list can be set to display any desired information about a server. (See this tutorial for more information). The following data may be displayed:

Column Description
Nodename Displays the nodename of the server to which this connection has been created.

Description A description of the NewsRog event that caused this connection to be created, or Idle if this connection is currently unused.
TCP Status The status of the TCP connection. This might be: Connecting, Connected, Disconnected, Sending, Receiving, Finding Host, or Error.
Speed The average speed in Kb/sec that has been attained so far over the course of this paticular network operation. This will reset when a different action in NewsRog causes the connection to be used for something else.
In Bytes % The number of bytes (or more commonly, Kb or Mb) transferred so far for this operation. This will also reset for each logical operation.
In Lines The number of logical lines send by the server so far for this connection.
Hostname The hostname component of the server's nodename for this connection. This is shorter than the nodename.

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Summary By this point in the tutorial you should understand:

  • When NewsRog starts multiple network connections.
  • How to abort network connections, and what effect this has on the operations that started them.
  • What all of the buttons in the network connection window do.
  • What the different columns available for display mean.
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