From: Erland Sommarskog (sommar@algonet.se)
Date: Thu Aug 19 1999 - 16:33:47 CDT
Charles Lindsey (chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk) writes:
> I agree with Brad. The prime purpose of Paths is prevention of loops, etc.
> Uniqueness is a MUST, how it is achieved is a matter of convenience.
Hm, so if I run my newsserver on NT, and grab a GUID and use this,
this is OK? I'm not really sure how they work, but I have the im-
pression that you can request a ID which is guaranteed to be globally
unique. Do we really want path-identities like:
1AEB1360-5AFC-11d0-B806-00C04FD706EC
without the leading dot as mandated by option 5?
> There is, however, still a difference. Suppose isp.com relays through a
> machine news17.isp.com (it has at least 17 relaying machines,
> apparently). There is an A record for news17.isp.com, but it is too much
> hassle to make all 17 machines mailable (mail should be sent to isp.com,
> and most newsadmins who want to contact them could probably guess that).
> Alternatively, the article might pass through a chain of machines at
> isp.com, all with A records, but we do not insist that all are mailable
> (though one would hope that at least 1 of them was).
>
> OTOH, isp.com MUST NOT, in that case, inject at news17.isp.com (though he
> could add two path entries "news17.isp.com/isp.com%" to make it legal).
I still think it is inconsistent. Say that news17.isp.com has an
MX record. Nevertheless, the machine is not being used as an
injector, but only for relay. Why should news17.isp.com be required
to have the addresses, when it is not required when it only has an
A record?
Besides, I'm not wholly convinced that only injectors must be mailable.
We seem to agree that <news@FQDN> is mainly for technical issues, such
as malformed headers. But if a relayer is found to rewrite addresses
in a proper way, should it not be contactable? Or put it the other way
round if you wish: why MUST injectors be contactable?
> Well they are indeed third class insofar as you MUST NOT inject at them
> (because most people don't know how to mail to a UUCP address anymore :-(
> ). But you might indeed argue that forbidding UUCP-site-injection is going
> to far, but that is what we seem to have agreed to.
I have voiced the opinion that I think it's a bit harsh. Then again,
the practical impact might be igorable, so I rest that particular
case.
> >[I still don't really see why option 4 could not be comibined with
> >a usenet@ address, but I rest that case.]
>
> It is not forbidden, but less likely to happen.
Reading the text closer, I see that it is not ruled out. But I think
the special requirements on injectors should be spelt our more
precisely. The example "news17.isp.com/isp.com%" that you gave,
would probably be good to sneak in somewhere.
-- Erland Sommarskog, Stockholm, sommar@algonet.se