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From: javoskamp@watmath.waterloo.edu (Jeff Voskamp)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b
Subject: Re: Using "local" as a newsgroup name considered harmful
Message-ID: <14435@watmath.waterloo.edu>
Date: Sat, 22-Aug-87 14:06:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmath.14435
Posted: Sat Aug 22 14:06:22 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Aug-87 15:04:16 EDT
References: <434@acornrc.UUCP> <587@its63b.ed.ac.uk> <14347@watmath.waterloo.edu> <8430@utzoo.UUCP> <2857@psuvax1.psu.edu>
Reply-To: javoskamp@watmath.waterloo.edu (Jeff Voskamp)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
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Xref: mnetor news.admin:885 news.software.b:774

In article <2857@psuvax1.psu.edu> flee@gondor.psu.edu (Felix Lee) writes:
>Case:  Someone at Univ. Wisconsin posts to soc.motss and uw.general,
>distribution world.  The article turns up in uw.general at Univ. Waterloo.
>
>Case:  I want to post to Penn State and Univ. Waterloo, so I post the
>article to psu.general and uw.general, distribution na.  It turns up
>in uw.general at Univ. Wisconsin.
Actually I don't think it will.  From what I know news is only shipped out
if at least one of the newsgroups is in the L.sys file.  News posted to 
uw.general and soc.motss will get out because of the soc.motss and for that
reason only.  News posted to uw.general only will not leave the university
since we don't ship uw.general to anyone.  Since uw.* and psu.* aren't in 
the L.sys file here the article won't go anywhere.

>Problem:  Given two regions A1 and A2 with the same name A, how do you
>tell if the name A refers to A1 or A2?
>
>Answer:  You can't.
Too true.
>
>Solution:  Make all names unique.  Either make sure they're globally
>...
>Munging the Newsgroups line to delete local groups won't work, because
>the article could conceivably hop out of the region and hop back in
>faster than it hops across the region.
A question: would the local group hop out of the region and back in if the
article weren't cross posted?  If the answer is no then I'd say, chop out 
the local group name.  However this will cause some problems in the following
case:
given 3 sites a, b, and c where a, and b are in some region p and c is not.
Connections are as follows:
the pairs (a,b) exchange newsgroups x and y (x is local to region p).
(c,b), and (c,a) exchange newsgroup y. 
Problem: (c,a), and (c,b) exchange news every hour. (a,b) exchange news
one per day.  
Someone crossposts an article to x and y from a. As the news goes to c x is 
dropped from the newsgroups line.  Several hours later the news is in group y
at all sites, but is only in group x at site a.
Oh well, nothing's perfect.

How about a distribution per newsgroup?  Each newsgroup has a default distri-
bution, and as it crosses a boundary, the appropriate group(s) gets dropped.

Jeff Voskamp

The opinions expressed are correct.  However, they may be based on incorrect
assumptions.  If the assumptions are wrong, please let me know and I won't
use them in the future.
-- 
This should be fine, but I wouldn't put my life on the line over it.
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