Normal NNTP uses the following scheme to transfer articles:

Sender                    Receiver
  ---> Ihave <some Message>
   Ok send it to me       <---
  --->  sends the actual message 
   Says 'this was ok'    <---

This procedure uses 2*RTT on the link (rtt = round trip time) plus time
for the actual article transfer. Jerry Aguirre has rewritten NNTP code
so that it now sends a list of message ids to remote which checks it and
returns a value if it is to be sent. With each message sent Streaming NNTP
also sends a new message-id to check so that the flow of news keeps 
streaming.

Advantages of Streaming NNTP are
- Fast even on lines with a high rtt (e.g. satellite links)
- faster than normal nntp
- compatible as innxmit has a autofallback to normal nntp

Disadvantages are
- INN gets more compute intensive
- Streaming NNTP can fill a 64kB line that much that working 
over it via telnet gets a real pain.

Some parts © 2009 Advameg, Inc.