Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tiamat!jim From: jim@tiamat.fsc.com (Jim O'Connor) Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc Subject: Re^2: sigh (was Re: Short-circuiting a route) Message-ID: <626@tiamat.fsc.com> Date: 13 Jul 89 16:12:14 GMT References: <1062@aber-cs.UUCP> <59767@uunet.UU.NET> <3648@ncar.ucar.edu> <3842@phri.UUCP> <330@capmkt.COM> <14467@bfmny0.UUCP> Organization: Filtration Sciences - Chattanooga,TN Lines: 45 tneff@bfmny0.UUCP (Tom Neff) writes: >Ah'm just a simpul country lawyuh , but isn't the following true? > * If I am site X, and site Y is a direct neighbor of mine whom I poll > daily or better (maybe better than anyone else if it's worse than daily), > but I see a piece of incoming mail of the form a!b!X!c!d!e!Y!f!g, > then it's reasonable for me to reroute it as a!b!X!Y!f!g. Not necessarily. Assuming I'm from site "a", I may have a perfectly legitimate reason, which since you are not my direct neighbor, you probably wouldn't have any way to know, for why I want the message to take that route. If a!b!X!Y!f!g is really the better path, than it's up to me to keep MY routing info current, or to use a site that I trust to keep their info current as a rerouter. If you argue that "Well, you have no way of knowing about my direct link to Y because it's unpublished, therefore I'm doing you a favor", well do me a bigger favor and publish the link. Private links are common, but should be just that - private. If my mail were to fail on Y and I don't know how it got there, I will be at a disadvantage on how to rectify the situation. > * If my link to site Y is sick, then I ought to respect the longer path. How will you know it's sick, and what current MTA has a "don't reroute if link is sick" option? > * If no site in the bang path is a direct neighbor of mine, then I ought > to consult pathalias for the link to the site named rightward of mine, > and leave the rest of it the hell alone. That one sounds good. In this case if I'm "a" you really are doing me a favor since I've gone and generated a faulty path. If this can be rerouted, then great. But if there is no problem with the path, it should be left alone. > * In the first case mentioned above, if site Y does not know me by > name (i.e., the bang path is not reversible), then I ought to respect > the longer supplied path. [I think this is where most mail bounces > these days, no?] Just out of curiousity, why would you even bother with a one-way uucp link used for mail purposes? (I understand, and use, one-way anon uucp links for file pick ups.) ------------- James B. O'Connor jim@tiamat.fsc.com Filtration Sciences Corporation 615/821-4022 x. 651 *** Altos users unite! mail to "info-altos-request@tiamat.fsc.com" ***