[nos-bbs] purpose of R: lines, do we really need them, etc ?

[Bob Donnell]

As a former PBBS sysop (1992 time frame) those were devised as a means of
documenting what station and when a message entered the PBBS world, and
which stations handled it in between.  At one point the FCC went after every
station in the chain of forwarding a message that was commercial, and had
been put into the PBBS network for distribution.  It also served as a means
of determining if a message got hung up somewhere along the way, for what
ever reason - such as being forwarded over a marginal path, or one only open
during the day or night - HF forwarding, for example.

"Back in the day", it wasn't unusual for a message traveling from coast to
coast to pick up 15 R: lines, especially if HF propogation was poor, and VHF
was used to deliver the message via many hops.

Hope that helps a little!

73, Bob, KD7NM

-----Original Message-----
From: nos-bbs-bounces at lists.tapr.org [mailto:nos-bbs-bounces at lists.tapr.org]
On Behalf Of Maiko Langelaar (ve4klm)
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2008 1:11 PM
To: TAPR xNOS Mailing List
Subject: Re: [nos-bbs] purpose of R: lines, do we really need them, etc ?

Skip wrote :

> Oh my Maiko, a feature decision at hand ?

Not even close. I just want to hear from sysops what R: lines do or do not
do for them, their experiences with R: lines, that's all.

> PLEASE don't take this as impugning your experience!

I have very little experience in forwarding, and my knowledge of the use of
R: lines (I'm going to guess from the earlier days) is is very limited.

> Perhaps a question is how will WL2K treat a R: header in their system ?

I don't think WL2K cares, and I don't believe it is a standard field in any
header used in WinLink or Airmail. If anyone wants to correct me on that,
please do. It's just another header field, that's all.

> Is this an option to suppress only for B2F ?

I'm not looking to suppress anything. JNOS by default does not care for the
R: line by the looks of it (all the Rdate, Rcheck, whatever are set to
false).

> I guess I've talked myself into favoring dropping R: on the way into 
> WL2K ...  Adverse consequences will certainly show up ...

That was not the purpose of my post.

> Was R: something of a surprise in putting B2F together ?

Nope, it had nothing to do with it.

:)

Maiko Langelaar / VE4KLM


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