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From: levy@ttrdc.UUCP (Daniel R. Levy)
Newsgroups: net.mail,net.news
Subject: Re: Data compression to lower phone
Message-ID: <935@ttrdc.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 8-Jun-86 00:18:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: ttrdc.935
Posted: Sun Jun  8 00:18:12 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Jun-86 03:12:56 EDT
References: <327@spdcc.UUCP> <8200002@nucsrl> <2369@phri.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T, Computer Systems Division, Skokie, IL
Lines: 43
Xref: watmath net.mail:1668 net.news:4976

>> [...] a site that passes news articles to other sites could just pass
>> on the compressed form (and tack on a compressed form of articles
>> originate from it).
>
>	Funny, I was just talking with someone this afternoon about this.
>There are a few problems.  The toughest one is that every article that
>passes through here has to get "phri!" prepended to its path line.  No way
>to do that without going through the uncompress/compress cycle (at least,
>not that I can see).  Pity.

There must be some sites out there which ARE passing on articles untouched
however.  It becomes glaringly evident when I attempt to reply to some sites
using the given path and have the mail bounce because system A knows system
B which in turn knows system C, but system B passes news it gets from system
A verbatim to system C, and system C does not know how to contact system A.
Then when I try to mail ..!C!A!..!joeuser according to the return path, it
bounces.  (It is also possible that system A knows system C and sends news to
it but that system C does not reciprocate the relationship even for mail, to
be sure.  However whenever I've bothered to follow up a failed return path,
and sent mail to the administrator or postmaster of the system that bounced
the mail, I invariably seem to get told [by the postmaster of system C] that
"gee whiz, system B sends us our news, and I don't know why it does not
include its name in the return path.")

Seems like maybe it would help if the news software on systems like C could
check to see if the name of their feed is part of the return path and if not,
prepend that name along with its own.  Perhaps this could also reduce
loopbacks, if system B had more than one feed, call the other one system
D, by allowing system D to know that system B had already handled an article
which B had passed through untouched once and which propagated by tortuous
path from C back to D.

(True, that wouldn't even help if the news had been passed along untouched
over more than one link.  Maybe a protocol for passing news through untouched
while still adding pertinent path information could be worked out?)
-- 
 -------------------------------    Disclaimer:  The views contained herein are
|       dan levy | yvel nad      |  my own and are not at all those of my em-
|         an engihacker @        |  ployer or the administrator of any computer
| at&t computer systems division |  upon which I may hack.
|        skokie, illinois        |
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