Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!uwmcsd1!dogie!uwvax!oddjob!ncar!ames!oliveb!jerry From: jerry@oliveb.olivetti.com (Jerry Aguirre) Newsgroups: news.software.nntp Subject: pseudo inews puts client hostname in "Path:" line Keywords: inews nntp path client Message-ID: <21631@oliveb.olivetti.com> Date: 11 May 88 23:26:02 GMT Organization: Olivetti ATC; Cupertino, CA Lines: 23 The pseudo inews that comes with NNTP adds a "From:" line and a "Path:" line. The "From:" line is an obvious requirement so that mail replies will work. The "Path:" line is created as "hostname!login" where "hostname" is the name of the NNTP client. Inserting the hostname of the client is what seems incorrect. The "Path:" header line is used to avoid sending articles to sites they have already passed through. In the trivial case it prevents a site from sending the article back to the site it came from. But the posting NNTP "client" most likely doesn't have news feed to it and most certainly doesn't have the article in question. So inserting its hostname is at best un-necessary and in theory wrong. Aside from increasing the "Path:" line unnecessarily it also increases the posibility of a name collision. The typical work station using NNTP to access news has no external connections and the administration usually doesn't worry about conflicting with external names. How about if the pseudo inews creats a "Path:" line of just "login"? Then the server news software should prefix it with "serverhost!".