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Re: Loop control

2001-10-05 20:34:39

Jacob Palme <jpalme(_at_)dsv(_dot_)su(_dot_)se> writes:

(2) Store, in the MTA, the Message-IDs of messages passing.
     Can also be combined with checksums of message content.
     This is the main method of loop control in Usenet News, but
     is not used very much outside Usenet News. In Usenet News,
     it has a bug - the same article is *not* accepted twice,
     even if it is received a second time to a different
     newsgroup.

This is correct; however, I wouldn't call it a bug.  It is an absolute
requirement of the Usenet article format that the message ID be globally
unique; it is not permissable to have two articles with the same message
ID, ever.  If two articles have different Newsgroups headers, they're
different articles, and they are not permitted to have the same message
ID.

     This can only handle for messages entering News from e-mail.

If the articles aren't given different message IDs, I'd there's a bug in
the mail to news gateway because it isn't following the requirements of
the Usenet protocol.

The Usenet protocol was not designed for ease of gatewaying in mind, and
this could arguably be called a flaw, but since this behavior is an
intentional implication of the protocol I think "bug" is the wrong term.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra(_at_)stanford(_dot_)edu)             
<http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

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