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!".