net TZ access

[Joseph S. Myers]

On Wed, 1 Oct 1997, Antoine Leca wrote:

> It sounds like a NNTP-like protocol, doesn't it?
> Thus, can NNTP be extended to signal a change in TZ information?
> (This is just an idea out of my head, I don't know the internals of
>  NNTP, so I know nothing about the feasability).

You don't need to extend NNTP - the obvious way of using it would be to
create a newsgroup that carries PGP-signed updates to the timezone data,
and periodically check for new articles and run zic.

However, this may not be the best system for distributing timezone
updates, since most hosts will only care about the data for their locality
in the present and future, and news distribution is unreliable.  A
dedicated protocol would be more efficient in bandwidth terms, and this
might be worthwhile for dialup hosts.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
jsm28 at cam.ac.uk