Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!rochester!rit!ultb!lmb7421
From: lmb7421@ultb.UUCP (L.M. Barstow)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: sigh (was Re: Short-circuiting a route)
Message-ID: <1063@ultb.UUCP>
Date: 18 Jul 89 18:07:00 GMT
References: <1062@aber-cs.UUCP> <12185@s.ms.uky.edu>
Reply-To: lmb7421@ultb.isc.rit.edu.UUCP (L.M. Barstow (674SPS))
Organization: Wandering Damage, Cosmo Police, Psi division
Lines: 38

In article <12185@s.ms.uky.edu> david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) writes:
>
>Something I've heard said a lot recently is along the lines that
>it's somehow evil to have mailers which believe they know more about
>routing than the sender does.
>
>I wonder ... how do you know the sender knows *ANYTHING* about routing?
>In my environment, most of the users don't care a whit about UUCP
>routing, or any other routing style at that.  They just want to use
>a simple addressing style, user@place is fine, and send it off.
>So I configure the mailer here to use pathalias to generate a list
>of routes and tell people to specify user@host.uucp, but *they*
>don't know anything

The better suggestion is...if they specify a host user@host.UUCP,
interpret it for them...but if they specify a path, just send it to the
next machine on the list, or bounce it if you can't do that. 

As for figuring out if the sender *does* know something, if it has a
path, assume they person knows something...if not, or if the path is
wrong, assume (s)he's stupid (no insult intended).

And, yes, after putting up with evil mailers which think they know more
than I do about routing my mail, it *is* evil to have such mailers.
I hate waiting weeks for my mail, and I hate being told by aa rabid
re-router that a site off-net doesn't exist, just because it isn't in
the net maps.  Is this so hard to understand?  If it takes an extra hop
or two because I didn't catch some obscure routing, fine...if it doesn't
go through because a rabid re-router didn't catch some obscure
re-routing, that is *not* fine.  I'd rather have slow mail than no mail.

SunSinger

-- 
Les Barstow                   |Bitnet: LMB7421@RITVAX                           
"What about the R.O.U.S's?"   |UUCP: ...rutgers!rochester!ritcv!ultb!lmb7421
"The Rodents Of Unusual Size? |ARPA: lmb7421@ultb.isc.rit.edu
I don't believe they exist!" - Buttercup and Wesley, _The Princess Bride_