Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!bbn!usc!bloom-beacon!ambar From: ambar@bloom-beacon.mit.edu (Jean Marie Diaz) Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc Subject: Re: replies to news Path: header Message-ID: Date: 30 Jul 89 20:13:42 GMT References: <1062@aber-cs.UUCP> <59767@uunet.UU.NET> <3648@ncar.ucar.edu> <2141@itivax.iti.org> <8984@chinet.chi.il.us> Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Organization: Madhouse International Technologies Lines: 25 In-reply-to: les@chinet.chi.il.us's message of 17 Jul 89 19:12:36 GMT From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) Date: 17 Jul 89 19:12:36 GMT Did anyone think that people typed those 20-hop paths by hand? Especially people who don't know what they are doing? Replies to news articles and subsequent replies to those messages are almost certainly the source of everything the rabid rerouters complain about. So, why not fix it in the news software by making hosts that are capable of re-routing rewrite the Path: line so that mail following the Path: will be "dynamically" re-routed? That way the dumber downstream sites don't need to change anything (any they probably won't anyway). Because one of the purposes of the Path: header in news (in my opinion, the PRIMARY purpose) is to track the places where that article has already gone, and not send it on further. Your suggestion would have news travelling in loops, further overloading high-bandwidth sites. Using the Path: header as a mail reply path is, at best, unreliable, and at worst (think of moderated newsgroups, or newsgroups that are gatewayed to and from mailing lists) completely wrong. AMBAR ambar@bloom-beacon.mit.edu {mit-eddie,uunet}!bloom-beacon!ambar