Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!cmcl2!yale!husc6!harvard!spdcc!dyer
From: dyer@spdcc.UUCP (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.news.sa,net.news.adm
Subject: Re: sendsys msgs and return paths
Message-ID: <428@spdcc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 14-Oct-86 23:59:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: spdcc.428
Posted: Tue Oct 14 23:59:08 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 15-Oct-86 20:10:25 EDT
References: <602@imagen.UUCP> <424@spdcc.UUCP> <30ac6214.1de6@apollo.uucp>
Reply-To: dyer@spdcc.UUCP (Steve Dyer)
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA
Lines: 30
Xref: mnetor net.news.sa:277 net.news.adm:725

>>Netnews control messages are propagated exactly like all other news
>>articles, and when your site receives a 'sendsys' control message, the
>>news software uses the string in the Path: field of the message as a
>>return path to mail your sys file back to the site which made the request.  
>
>Only if your software is stupid.  Sending mail along the news path is
>anti-social at best, and wrong at worst.  The path only reflects the path
>the news took, and does not necessarily reflect an optimal, or even a
>valid, mail path.  Semi-stupid mailers (like the one we run) will look
>up a path in a pathalias data base given the site name of the target.
>Smart mailers will use Honeyman's pathparse to disambiguate the target
>and look up an optimal (modulo GIGO) path to it.

Apparently the person bellyaching about the return paths isn't running a
'smart mailer' with INTERNET defined, which is the important point here.
Without INTERNET defined in the news software, running a vanilla UNIX
distribution (generic Sys V, Ultrix 1.2, etc.) without any mail hacks,
the behavior I describe above is exactly what you're going to get, stupid
or not.  I find it disingenuous at best to pontificate about 'anti-social
behavior' on the part of the news/mail interface when smart mailers are
still in the minority and most sites behave just as is described here.

I believe News 2.11 allows one to define INTERNET and have replies sent
via the backbone provided one has listed well-known paths to backbone sites
in a news data file.  (This is from a 1 minute perusal of the 2.11 sources
so I might be a bit off.)
-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@harvard.HARVARD.EDU
{linus,wanginst,bbnccv,harvard,ima,ihnp4}!spdcc!dyer