*BSD News Article 74262


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From: tedm@agora.rdrop.com
Newsgroups: demon.ip.support,demon.tech.unix,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Batch FTP and Web Pages
Date: 20 Jul 1996 07:57:34 GMT
Organization: Symantec Corporation
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <4sq3he$86a@symiserver2.symantec.com>
References: <4schgu$7t@anorak.coverform.lan> <837555317snz@dsl.co.uk> <4shbes$4r7@news-gb7osp.ampr.org> <837651236snz@dsl.co.uk>
Reply-To: tedm%toybox@agora.rdrop.com
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In <837651236snz@dsl.co.uk>, Brian {Hamilton Kelly} <bhk@dsl.co.uk> writes:

[more news stuff deleted]
>
>RFC1036 mandates quite clearly that the Message-ID shall be unique; the
>only way of ensuring this is to use a domain name within it that one can
>guarantee no one else to be using: to do this requires that the domain be

Once again not correct.  The Internic has already begun retracting commercial
domain names that are not paid for. (or at least whatever company they have
doing their dirty work for them is)

It is therefore conceiveable that the same domain name could be used in
different organizations, separated by a time delta.  For example, a popular
domain name like "greatdeal.com"  (which is a poor choice in my opinion)
might be used by Fred's used cars one year, and Sam's used tricycles the
next.  News servers running in each organization could then have the potential
of creating duplicate message article ID's.

While this would probably not affect Usenet that much because everyone expires
news quite rapidly, sites that archive news postings could in theory end up
with totally legitimate duplicate message ID's

The moral here is that even a domain name (now that they are apparently
available to the highest bidder, thank you webmercialization) used in the
message ID does not guarentees uniqueness.  It only lowers the probability
of duplication.