16.2 NNTP Protocol

The NNTP protocol is specified in RFC 977. The NNTP protocol server listens at a well-known port 199/TCP.

Once again, as the NNTP protocol commands are in ASCII, it is possible to use the Telnet program (for example, from Windows 2000/XP) to communicate with the news server:

C:\WINNT>telnet news.provider.com 119

After a connection is established, the server will introduce itself as follows:

200 news.provider.com InterNetNews NNRP server INN 2.4.1 ready (posting ok).

The first line of a reply is always a status line indicating how successful we were. The status line begins with a three-digit status code. The three-digit status codes are similar to those in the FTP and HTTP protocols:

100 help text follows
199 debug output
200 server ready posting allowed
201 server ready no posting allowed
202 slave status noted
205 closing connection goodbye!
211 n f l s group selected
(n = estimated number of articles in group,
f = first article number in the group,
l = last article...