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From: coolidge@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu (John Coolidge)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: Anyone interested in end-to-end checksums in news?
Summary: RFC's, error reporting
Message-ID: <1989Nov17.001724.16164@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 17 Nov 89 00:17:24 GMT
References: <14594@well.UUCP> <14922@bfmny0.UU.NET> <1989Nov16.173546.6101@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu> <14923@bfmny0.UU.NET>
Sender: news@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu
Reply-To: coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu
Organization: U of Illinois, CS Dept., Systems Research Group
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tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff) writes:

>Exempting specific header fields (Path, Xref) from checksumming is an
>acceptable alternative to checksumming just the body, provided you don't
>mind enthroning a specific set of headers in the RFC (this proposal
>needs one, by the way).

What really needs to be done is to integrate the Checksum: feature
and all of the bugs in the RFC's that have come to light in this
group over the last few months and make up an all-new Standards for
Transmission of Usenet News RFC. Limit specifically the ability of
header-mungers to work their evil voodoo, fix implementation-specific
RFC bogosities, that sort of thing.

>It seems worthwhile to log corrupted articles carefully including path
>information, so that suspect links can be investigated.  The info could
>be collected periodically a la Arbitron and collated centrally for
>announcement on a new cable TV show, "Usenet's Most Wanted" :-)

Yup, this sounds like the right thing to do. Shunt the damaged
article off to the side, report the problem, and make sure it
doesn't go past your site.

--John

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John L. Coolidge     Internet:coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu   UUCP:uiucdcs!coolidge
Of course I don't speak for the U of I (or anyone else except myself)
Copyright 1989 John L. Coolidge. Copying allowed if (and only if) attributed.
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