Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!ll-xn!ames!oliveb!jerry
From: jerry@oliveb.UUCP (Jerry F Aguirre)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b
Subject: Re: serious problem - mod articles not sent to mailing site
Message-ID: <675@oliveb.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 19-Mar-87 15:36:56 EST
Article-I.D.: oliveb.675
Posted: Thu Mar 19 15:36:56 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Mar-87 06:41:24 EST
References: <1626@lsuc.UUCP> <1830@blia.BLI.COM> <1644@lsuc.UUCP> <1865@blia.BLI.COM>
Reply-To: jerry@oliveb.UUCP (Jerry F Aguirre)
Organization: Olivetti ATC; Cupertino, Ca
Lines: 34
Xref: mnetor news.admin:270 news.software.b:402

In article <1865@blia.BLI.COM> ted@blia.BLI.COM (Ted Marshall) writes:
>> From ted@blia.UUCP (Ted Marshall) Thu Mar 12 09:51:49 1987
>> Path: blia!voder!pyramid!decwrl!decvax!ucbvax!blia.UUCP!ted
>        ----                                    ----
...
>Note the path. Even though it originated at blia.UUCP (my site), it still
>returned.

No, "blia" does not equal "blia.UUCP", at least not in the news software.
You "lucked out" as a result of having inconsistant host names in your
mail and news software.  Also some sites use procedures that bypass the
"don't send back" rule.  For instance I feed 4 "leaf" sites and send the
same batches of news to all of them.  It is not worth the overhead to
filter out the <1% of the articles that came from each one.  So they get
their articles back and reject them because of the history file.

>Also, as I understand the workings of USENET, the don't-send-back-to-a-node-
>on-the-path rule is un-needed because of the history file, the same way that
>a node with two news feeds doesn't get two copies of everything.

The problem with this is that you have already payed for it.  The
orriginating site batched, compressed, and queued it.  Someone payed for
the transmission (phone) costs to send it.  And the receiving site
uncompressed, unbatched, and checked each article against the database.
An expensive proposition if your just going to throw it away.

Without this "rule", each site would send every article back to the site
it just came from, doubling the transmission costs.

The "Path:" line is supposed to reflect the NEWS systems the article
went through, not systems it was mailed through.  Moderators fix your
software!

					Jerry Aguirre