Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!xanth!mcnc!decvax!ima!cfisun!lakart!dg
From: dg@lakart.UUCP (David Goodenough)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: sigh (was Re: Short-circuiting a route)
Message-ID: <614@lakart.UUCP>
Date: 11 Jul 89 16:13:15 GMT
References: <3842@phri.UUCP>
Organization: Lakart Corporation, Newton, MA
Lines: 46

From article <3842@phri.UUCP>, by roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith):
> I was thinking of not
> touching bang paths at all but doing lookups on person@host.UUCP type
> addresses.  Does this seem reasonable?

Fine, but consider the following:

lakart!dg

from your system is going to need _ROUTING_ since phri doesn't talk to lakart.
So, convert user@host.UUCP to host!user, and then route if and _ONLY_ if you
don't talk directly to host. For example phri talks to acheron (according to
my map data it does), so:

	user@acheron.UUCP

wouldn't need routing, nor would:

	acheron!lakart!dg

However, this second case assumes that acheron can route to lakart ....

	dg@lakart.UUCP

and:

	lakart!dg

both get routed.

Paul Vixie - don't read the next bit, it will give you the shivers.....

A special hack I have added is that routes that go out via cfisun here
_DO_ get _REROUTED_, but that is for my own sanity. 99% of our news
comes from cfisun, and it allows me to use the Path: as a route, since
somewhere along the way it gets changed to a reasonable path. An interesting
concept, (which I have no idea how to do) is to evaluate the "cost" of the
supplied path, and the cost of the optimal path (in pathalias terms) and
reroute if the supplied cost is twice (three times) or greater the cost of
the optimal path. That would generally solve the Path: problem, but only
where it was needed.
-- 
	dg@lakart.UUCP - David Goodenough		+---+
						IHS	| +-+-+
	....... !harvard!xait!lakart!dg			+-+-+ |
AKA:	dg%lakart.uucp@xait.xerox.com		  	  +---+