07-20-2004 - ADVISORY: Use DNS for server selection

Be sure that you are looking up the address of the server you use for news rather than saving the IP or using the name of an individual server. As part of ongoing upgrades SOME OF THIS IS GOING TO CHANGE!

 You have been warned, you know who you are Someone told you that "server so-and-so" is the fast one, and you are using a name like "newssvr26" instead of news.chi.sbcglobal.net, or something like that. It is going to break, some servers will be down for extended periods, some will go away.

Special contributors feel free to bookmark this warning, I fear it will be useful soon.

-- bill davidsen (davidsen@darkstar.prodigy.com)
SBC/Prodigy Yorktown Heights NY data center
Project Leader, USENET news
http://newsgroups.news.prodigy.com