Transit server

Modern transit servers usually use NNTP to exchange news continually over the Internet and similar always-on connections. In the past, servers normally employed the UUCP protocol, which was designed for intermittent dial-up connections. Other ad hoc protocols, including e-mail, are less commonly seen. News servers normally connect with multiple peers, with the redundancy helping to spread loads and ensure that articles are not lost. Smaller sites, called leaf nodes, are connected to one other major server. Articles are routed based on information found in the header lines defined in RFC 1036.