Towards the end of this HOWTO, we have added some information about the history of Usenet server software by quoting sections from an earlier Usenet Periodic Posting. We consider this historical perspective, and the Usenix papers and other documents referred to in it, essential reading for any Usenet server administrator. Please see the section titled "Usenet software: a historical perspective>".
INN addresses a Usenet news world which revolves around NNTP, though it has support for UUCP batches --- a fact that not many INN administrators seem to talk about. INN works faster than the CNews-NNTPd combination when processing multiple parallel incoming NNTP feeds. For multiple readers reading and posting news over NNTP, there is no difference between the efficiency of INN and NNTPd. Section 5.7> discusses the efficiency issues of INN over the earlier C-News architecture, based on Rich Salz' paper and our analyses of usage patterns.
INN's architecture has inspired a lot of high-performance Usenet news software, including a lot of commercial systems which address the ``carrier class'' market. That is the market for which the INN architecture has clear advantages over C-News.