ietf-nntp BCP for RFC977 server/RFC1036 interaction

[Evan Champion]

On Wed, 18 Dec 1996, Rich Salz wrote:

> >2) During POST: discard any pre-existing Path:.
> 
> No.  Useful for mail/news gateways and to allow clients to reroute
> avoiding "hostile" hosts (r.h.f and Waterloo)

I know this has been discussed ad infinitum in news.software.nntp.

I do not see any reason for standard readers to need to specify a Path. 
If there are "hostile" hosts out there, then we should be spending the
effort to get them shut down rather than "breaking the rules" in order to 
let people get around these sites.

Gateways are somewhat trickier, in that I assume the case you mean is for
news-to-mail-to-news gatewaying, where you'd want to restore the path.  
What about posting it via ihave?  That would at least require the posting 
agent to have server access to the machine, something one could 
reasonably expect from a gateway.

In my mind, the path is supposed to represent the news servers a message 
has passed through, and if you're not an news server you shouldn't be 
playing with it.

If it is really an issue, I'd be happy with the following wording:
"Servers MUST by default remove Path headers on post, however they MAY
have a configurable option to disable this behaviour." 

Evan
--
Evan Champion            * Director, Network Operations
mailto:evanc at synapse.net * Directeur, Exploitation du reseau
http://www.synapse.net/  * Synapse Internet