Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!mailrus!uwmcsd1!nic.MR.NET!umn-cs!mmm!ems!datapg!sewilco
From: sewilco@datapg.MN.ORG (Scot E Wilcoxon)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Visibility of dup site names
Message-ID: <1597@datapg.MN.ORG>
Date: 25 Aug 88 23:04:38 GMT
References: <1988Aug21.045032.15240@utzoo.uucp> <817@ace.ee.lbl.gov>
Reply-To: sewilco@datapg.MN.ORG (Scot E Wilcoxon)
Followup-To: news.software.b
Organization: Data Progress, Minneapolis, MN
Lines: 29

The discussion has wandered off to another domain vs site name battle, so
I changed the Subject line.

My proposal was that an article from site "abc" should be forced to be sent
to site "abc" unless the article was received from site "abc".  This will
stop sites with duplicate names from being invisible to each other.

Fully-qualified domain (FQD) names in the Path list will eliminate the
invisibility.  If rnews/inews were to use a dynamically allocated string,
the capability of fitting hundreds of such FQD names in 32K or 64K should
be sufficient.  The Path field presently is truncated when too long.

The Path field is needed to track where a message has already been and is
used to prevent unnecessary transmission of articles.  The Message-ID
history mechanism can also stop articles from circulating endlessly in
the net, but well-connected sites would be flooded with duplicates.

The existing Path method, including truncation, serves its purpose.  It
stops well-connected sites from being flooded with articles which have
already passed through them, and it stops regional loops.  It also handles
the worst case of an article circulating around a path which goes around
well-connected sites, as well-connected sites will eventually rebroadcast
the article and kill it through the Message-ID mechanism.

But sites with identical ("uucp-style") names are invisible to each other.
My method at least makes the articles which the other sites post visible
to the duplicates.
-- 
Scot E. Wilcoxon  sewilco@DataPg.MN.ORG    {amdahl|hpda}!bungia!datapg!sewilco
Data Progress 	 UNIX masts & rigging  +1 612-825-2607    uunet!datapg!sewilco