Draft specification for future X-Trace header

[Kevin McKinnon]

> On Fri, 7 Jul 2000, Brian Kantor wrote:
> 
> > > > It has been my understanding that it is within the rights of the
> > > > server receiving the POST to rewrite not only the Message-ID,
> > > > but also the "Path:", "X-Trace:" and "Date:" fields in the
> > > > header.
> > > 
> > > It is not, and for good reasons neither INN nor C News/nntpd do it
> > > by default.
> > 
> > I differ.
> >
> > The original intention of POST was for first-time injection of
> > articles into the news system.  As such, eliding or editing headers
> > that might contain questionable data is part of the capabilities of
> > the POST command.

And Brian would know what the original intent of POST was...  ;-)   I 
also agree with his comments.

Sven wrote:

> Don't do that. Think of the - nowadays common - case, where your customer
> runs an INN installation on his home system, using suck and rpost for
> pulling and reposting articles.

How common?  1% of all USENET users?  10,000 users?  15 users??
I can't see this being as common as this discussion is making out. 
I fail to see why a customer would be running a news *server* on their home
machine.  (But I *invite* people to educate me...)

<Discussion of an improperly configured home server using suck and rpost
that's turned off for 20 days clipped for brevity>

> Can you follow me? :)

I follow and the points about rewriting headers make sense in that application.

I keep coming back to the idea that a news server doesn't belong
in a customers house, and if it is there, it should abide by standard transfer
protocol rather than bastardizing the standards by pretending (kind of) to be
a reader.  Remember that the overwhelming majority of client 
connections to the news server are *proper* newsreader connections.

In your example case, arrange for the customer to have a static IP 
address and set them up as a proper newsfeed on your server.  (From 
the ISP's point of view, *if* I had a customer with the need, this 
would be my course of action.)

Just my $0.02 before the weekend.  Again, if someone can give me a 
valid reason for a customer to be running a news server, I'll rethink 
my opinion.

Best regards,
Kev

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Kevin McKinnon, Sr. News Administrator              news at sunshinecable.com
Sunshine Communications Cable Internet       http://news.sunshinecable.com
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