10.5.1 Slow/Expensive NNTP Connection

If you run Emacs on a machine locally, and get your news from a machine over some very thin strings, you want to cut down on the amount of data Gnus has to get from the NNTP server.

gnus-read-active-file

Set this to nil, which will inhibit Gnus from requesting the entire active file from the server. This file is often v. large. You also have to set gnus-check-new-newsgroups and gnus-check-bogus-newsgroups to nil to make sure that Gnus doesn't suddenly decide to fetch the active file anyway.

gnus-nov-is-evil

This one has to be nil. If not, grabbing article headers from the NNTP server will not be very fast. Not all NNTP servers support XOVER; Gnus will detect this by itself.