From: lowen@lorc.UUCP (Lamar Owen)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc
Subject: Re: Another fidonet regurgitation
Date: Tue, 03 Nov 92 11:30:28 EST
Organization: LORC Enterprises

terry@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.) writes:
> [I know I'm going to regret this, but...]

Hey, no asbestos longjohns here :-).

> In article <49y2sB1w164w@lorc.UUCP>, lowen@lorc.UUCP (Lamar Owen) writes:
> > 6.) The admin at this particular Fido site has erred in some way.  The whol
> > Fidonet gets flamed about it.  Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. :->
> 
>   So why is it that almost every time there's a massive article regurgitation
> involving rewriting of the sender's address to the local node, it's coming
> from FidoNet?

A good question.  Fido sysops, the scoop please?  Note that although I have read
the Fido policy document and have scanned FTS-0001, I am not running a Fido site
as such.  I am running a DOS box using Waffle/DOS to connect (soon my system
will be converting to cnews on an Apollo DN3500).

>   If there is incorrect information in the documentation, can someone change
> it? If this is a common mistake (certainly seems to be to me), can the soft-
> ware be changed to not operate this way by default? Can we get the author of
> the software to correctly process message headers (simply preserving exist-
> ing message-id's would be a nice start, but if we want to get fancy we could
> try for not rewriting from addresses to the local node)?

"The Software" in this case is a vast melange of softwares doing the job in a
manner more-or-less according to FTS.  The problem is that Fido addresses and
the FQDN/bang-path addresses used on Usenet are mutually "poison".  This is
neither Usenet's nor Fidonet's fault--both systems work well within their
own scope.  And, fortunately, FQDN addressing adapts to Zone/net:node.point
addressing rather easily.

The problem of "correcting the software" is akin to the problem of leaking
distributions in Usenet.

Fido sites, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the RFC-1036 header
information is actually made to be part of the message body on Fido.  This
reveals the extent of the problem.

How can this be corrected?  If I am not mistaken, the gateway systems to/from
fidonet.org are responsible for header munging.  Gateway admins, speak up.

A possible solution, although it would GREATLY expand the fido nodelist, is
to assign a "Zone" number to Usenet, with each Usenet site getting a net:node
address.  Then, the gateways could directly map z/n:n to FQDN and the
world would be wonderful--to Usenet, at least.  Each and every Fido admin
would HATE it because the nodelist is already TOO BIG.

>   Whenever I've seen a non-Fido problem, it has usually been followed by a
> sheepish note here, and appropriate cancels issued in a timely manner. The
> worst non-Fido case I've seen was the "not authorized" thing in Japan, and
> that only returned messages to senders, not all over the net.

It sounds to me like the Fidonet difficulties are at the gateways.  Maybe the
gateway software needs investigation.  (Of course, there are multitudes of
Fido-Usenet gateway softwares around... :-().

And, I may very well be barking up the wrong tree altogether.  I run a Usenet
site, but have never actually RUN a Fido node.

>   I agree that the majority of Fido sites are probably well-behaved, pro-
> ductive members of the net. However, there are a few which earn the whole
> FidoNet the reputation it's developed.

Which is unfortunate.  I'm sure our rep with some Fido people is just as bad
(I can hear it now: "Those Usenet *weenies* are so dense!....."


--

Lamar Owen, Systems Consultant, GE Lighting Systems, Hendersonville, NC
***********************************************************************
 Opinions expressed herein are the author's and do not reflect policy
   or opinions of the General Electric Company or its subsidiaries.
***********************************************************************
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