This is nntptime[*], a program which attempts to measure how fast a news
server routes a single article.

It's been written and tested on Solaris 2.6, although it should run
without much problems on any system which supports pthreads.

How to use it:

  -- Configure an incoming feed on the news server you wish to test,
     from the host you'll be running nntptime on.

     Note that you can time how long it takes an article to traverse
     multiple servers; have nntptime feed the first hop, make sure
     each hop properly routes the test.nntptime group to the next
     hop, and make the last hop feed to nntptime.

     Multiple feeds into nntptime are also OK; it will accept and
     print the propagation delay for each copy of the article it
     receives.

  -- Preferably, configure your other outgoing feeds such that articles
     in test.nntptime do not get sent there.

  -- Configure an outgoing feed to the nntptime host, on port 5119. You
     should feed just the test.nntptime group.

  -- Run nntptime and wait for the news server to establish a connection.
     (if it doesn't do so without an article to send, proceed anyway)

  -- Connect to the remote server using the 'connect' command, and send
     a test article using 'send'.

  -- The article should come back, and nntptime will tell you how long
     it took between the IHAVE command being sent to the news server,
     and nntptime receiving a CHECK command for that article.

  -- To repeat the test, simply 'send' again.

Feedback, including bug reports or questions, can be directed to
kolya@mit.edu.

[*] After writing this program, I realized that Cyclone's timer program
    is named nntpTime. There is no connection between the two, except
    for the same goal of timing NNTP servers in some way.