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From: rees@apollo.uucp (Jim Rees)
Newsgroups: net.news.sa,net.news.adm
Subject: Re: sendsys msgs and return paths
Message-ID: <30ac6214.1de6@apollo.uucp>
Date: Mon, 13-Oct-86 11:17:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: apollo.30ac6214.1de6
Posted: Mon Oct 13 11:17:01 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 17-Oct-86 08:41:44 EDT
References: <602@imagen.UUCP> <424@spdcc.UUCP>
Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, Mass.
Lines: 13
Xref: watmath net.news.sa:372 net.news.adm:986


    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.