Re: #1047 Path-identity: A proposal (perhaps)

["Charles Lindsey" <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In <871x6ea08c.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Russ Allbery <rra@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>Charles Lindsey <chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>> Yes, but the path-address (IPv[46]address) is NOT "just diagnopstic
>> information" . It is in fairly widespread current use, with the intent
>> of avoiding duplicate propagation to the site which inserted it.

>Huh, really?  I'm not saying you're wrong, since I've not checked, but
>I've not personally seen anyone use an IP address as their actual path
>identity (as opposed to having it added by their peers as diagnostic
>information).

Well there is certainly a lot of IP addresses followed by ".MISMATCH", but
discounting those there are still a lot of IP addresses to be found

I trawled through 17893 articles in my archive, and found 721 (4%) with
naked IP addresses in them. Of these, 481 were one particular site
(uni-berlin.de) whose injector routinely inserted the dial-in IP after the
not-for-mail (the same as the NNTP-Posting-Host in fact). But that still
leaves 240 (1.3%) with IP addresses in the middle. 202 of these were three
sites (small.news.tele.dk, cyclone-sf.pbi.net and worldnet.att.net) which
seem sytematically to insert the IP from which it received the message
(but they did not appear to be MISMATCHes).

news-uk.onetel.net.uk seemed to insert its own IP address, followed by the
posting host (and no-not-for-mail) when injecting (30 0f those). Which
left a small core of other odds and ends.

So yes, a lot of it seems to be down to a small number of sites adding
their peer's IP as you said, but also some mavericks who do odd things when
injecting.

But I still think we have to allow it, for a variety of odd cases, and I
still think <path-identity> ought to include them for the purposes for
which I use it in USEPRO. But clearly the SHOULD NOT use IP addresses when
you have a perfectly good domain-name, in my latest proposed text, is
still OK (and most people seem already to be following it). Note that the
text I have written applies to sites identifying themselves - MISMATCHes
are dealt with elsewhere in USEPRO.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: chl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9      Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5