Mayayana wrote:

That doesn't really explain it, though I have wondered if
eternal-september might be seeing multiple connections from
the same cable neighborhood as coming from the same location.
But that's only one message I get.


The news client can do more than one thing at a time, given
an opportunity.

For example, in Thunderbird, tick the (+) box next to the server
name, to start a scan for new messages. If, a second later, you
click the group at the top of the list, while the scan is
still working its way down the list (looking for new articles),
that second click can open a new connection to the server, to
get the list of articles for the group and display them iu the
right pane. The two commands can be asynchronous. If you're a real
"click monkey", you could undoubtedly queue up a few connections.
And the connections would happen, if you went into the Config Editor
and changed the connection limit. (Of course, if the server limits
them on its end, it's going to give you one of those fine error
messages.)

Web browsers (of which Thunderbird has a browser engine inside),
also support connection limiting, but users typically set the
limit to around 8 connections or so. I've never tried messing
with that, to see how fouled up I could make things.

To test that limit (8 in the browser), I recommend opening about
21 windows or so (that's how many I have open right now), then
go to Task Manager and do an "End Process" on Firefox. Firefox
remembers session information, even if killed off in that way.
Now, when you next click your Firefox icon, to start a new session,
it knows it was terminated in mid-session, and it'll ask
if you want those 21 windows back again. When it goes to
reload the windows, that gives an excellent opportunity to
see how the connection limit affects things. I find some
of the 21 windows that open, stay blank for maybe 30 seconds,
until they get their turn to open a connection. The connection
limit, slows down the refreshing of the 21 windows.

I use the "session memory" feature on purpose - if I want Firefox
to open those windows the next time I boot, I "kill" Firefox
rather than quitting it, and that remembers everything
I was working on. It beats bookmarking 21 things, one at a time.

Paul