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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!columbia!caip!clyde!cbatt!cbosgd!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!j.cc.purdue.edu!rsk
From: rsk@j.cc.purdue.edu (Whitewater Wombat)
Newsgroups: net.news.b
Subject: NETCHRS in defs.h might need tweaking
Message-ID: <1861@j.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: Sat, 23-Aug-86 02:58:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: j.1861
Posted: Sat Aug 23 02:58:05 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 25-Aug-86 01:59:26 EDT
Organization: Purdue University
Lines: 17
Keywords: domains vs. news

The constant string NETCHRS in defs.h for news 2.10.3 beta may need
some adjustment if your hostnames contain periods.  This string is
apparently contains characters which may be used to separate host
names on various networks (e.g. "!"), one of which is currently ".".
Well, since domain names tend to contain a lot of periods, news tends
to get rather confused.  Specifically, we observed hosts ping-ponging
news back and forth since host "i.cc.purdue.edu" thought news originating
from host "j.cc.purdue.edu" was really from host "edu".

Of course, all the bounced articles were rejected, but with 11 local
hosts exchanging news, the traffic was horrible...a few local articles
apparently escaped off-campus in the confusion.  I "fixed" the problem
by removing "." from NETCHRS; I figure that since domain names use
"." as a separator, that we won't see host names separated with "."
in the future.  I hope I'm right.
-- 
Rich Kulawiec, pucc-j!rsk, rsk@j.cc.purdue.edu