Streaming extensions of the NNTP protocol provide methods of pipelining article transfers to maximize connection throughput. If redundant server links are used for service reliability improvement, this causes substantial bandwidth loss, as the same articles may be transferred in parallel on different links. An extension of the existing NNTP protocol is described which can circumvent this problem by actively shaping the bandwidth of the incoming connections. Also, a method for remote measurement of NNTP protocol bandwidth is described.