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

[Jay Nugent]

Greetings,

On Fri, 28 Mar 2008, Bob Donnell wrote:

> 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

   Hence the reason we have both the "R"ead and "V"erbose commands in the
JNOS BBS.  Read would show just the simple header To/From/Subject/Date,
while Verbose would list *all* the R: lines and/or relay lines, depending
upon whether the message was carried as Hierarchical mail or as SMTP mail.
SMTP mail can be passed through one or more "open relays" before it gets
to its destination (See: 'smtp gateway').

   The R: (and Verbose) features *ARE* still needed for the very reason
Bob mentions above.  The FCC requires that in *automated and unmanned*
packet nodes that we be able to identify who posted a bad email into the
system, and which node was the first to have accepted said bad message
into the network.  As THEY were held accountable.

   Enjoy!
      --- Jay Nugent  WB8TKL
             
"Getting rid of terrorism is like getting rid of dandruff.  It cannot
 be done completely no matter how hard you try." -- Gore Vidal
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Jay Nugent   jjn at nuge.com    (734)484-5105    (734)544-4326/Fax        |
| Nugent Telecommunications  [www.nuge.com]     (734)649-0850/Cell       |
|   Internet Consulting/Linux SysAdmin/Engineering & Design/ISP Reseller |
| ISP Monitoring [www.ispmonitor.net] ISP & Modem Performance Monitoring |
| Web-Pegasus    [www.webpegasus.com] Web Hosting/DNS Hosting/Shell Accts|
| LinuxNIC, Inc. [www.linuxnic.net]   Registrar of the .linux TLD        |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
  5:01pm  up 156 days, 18:15,  5 users,  load average: 0.21, 0.20, 0.25