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By: Ward Dossche, Many Glacier (2:292/854)
To: Warren Bonner, Interim Fidonews Editor (1/23)
Re: New flag proposal

* Forwarded from 2:292/854, many-glacier.mine.nu in Mortsel B
* Originally to All in the IC echo.

Proposal for new flag: PING

Sometimes it becomes difficult to get one's mail delivered by normal routing.

Routing-schemes follow strange paths or in certain cases may be missing completely resulting in undelivered and/or lost mail.

To enable suspicious senders to check the routing their mails take the "PING"- flag is hereby proposed.

Usage:

"PING" without any arguments

Meaning:

Nodes flying this flag will adhere to the following functionality:

1) PING-function: """"""""""""""""" If a message destined to "PING" arrives at its final destination and this final destination flies the "PING"-flag, then the receiving node will bounce the message back to the original sender clearly displaying all the original via-lines.

If a message destined to "PING" arrives at its final destination but this final destination does not fly the "PING"-flag then the message may be deleted from the inbound-queue without further follow-up.

2) TRACE-function: """""""""""""""""" If a message destined to "PING" arrives at a node which flies the PING-flag but is merely passing-through to another destination then the in-transit node will notify the sender of this occurence and will forward the original mail unaltered towards its final destination.

This can easily be achieved with OT by putting the following lines in the READR.OT-file:

**** QUOTE ****

(1)ByName/Name="ping" /NewName="Ping" ByName /Name="PING" /NewName="Ping"

(2) Bouncebytext /Textline=" " /IfDest=2:292/854 /IfDestName="Ping"

(3) .../Template=ping.tem ByName /Name="Ping" /NewName="Ping" /Notify=trace.tem

(4)**** UNQUOTE****

(1) = Normalising the name "Ping" (case conversion)

(2) = Normalising the name "Ping" (case conversion)

(3) = Bounce the mail to sender if addressed to "Ping" at "2:292/854"

(4) = Notify the sender his mail passed-through at 2:292/854 but was sent-on (trace-function)

Sincerely,

\x/@rd Dossche
IC & ZC/2

* Forwarded by Ward Dossche on 2:292/854, many-glacier.mine.nu in Mortsel B