Path: utzoo!attcan!telly!eci386!clewis
From: clewis@eci386.uucp (Chris Lewis)
Newsgroups: ont.uucp
Subject: Could someone explain this for me?
Message-ID: <1989Nov8.195924.29680@eci386.uucp>
Date: 8 Nov 89 19:59:24 GMT
Reply-To: clewis@eci386 (Chris Lewis)
Distribution: ont
Organization: R. H. Lathwell Associates: Elegant Communications, Inc.
Lines: 49

This is driving me nuts.  I've been trying to understand this crap for
years, but I've never been able to get someone who really understands
this to either explain it, or tell me *where* I can RTFM.  I'm running
smail 2.5 and pathalias 9 with the current maps *without* any
path file stripping (eg: Peter Honeyman's egrep).

On occasion, I've seen references to the ".on.ca" domain float by.
So, I try sending mail to "evan@telly.on.ca".  These are our path
entries:

>.telly.on.ca	yunexus!utai!yorkvm1.bitnet!%s	195
>telly	telly!%s	195
>telly.on.ca	yunexus!utai!yorkvm1.bitnet!telly.on.ca!%s	195

(We have a direct connect to telly).

H'm, smail 2.5 expands that out to:

    yunexus!utai!yorkvm1.bitnet!evan

Well, it would be nice if it expanded simply to "telly!evan", but
it doesn't.  Guess we can live with that.  I think that "telly!telly.on.ca!evan"
would work too, but never mind.  Bitnet seems a little silly,
but okay.  Surely there's a better route from yunexus to yorkvm1.bitnet
than by utai, but okay.  But, unless Evan has made special arrangements 
with yorkvm1.bitnet, a userid of "evan" will bounce (and most probably
end up in the great bitbucket in the sky).

What's the problem?
	- Should smail be looking for ".telly.on.ca" first?
	  If not, I could fix that easily enough.
	- Should we be deleting certain patterns from the pathalias output?
	- Is there something wrong with telly's map entry?
	- Is there something wrong at York?
	- Is there something wrong with me?  (Naw, don't answer that!)
	- Is this a question that should never be asked?
	- Are .ca and .on.ca bogus?  From the point of view of the UUCP
	  maps they appear to be simply an exercise in inventing new
	  and non-functional naming.  They certainly don't seem to work 
	  anywhere as well as the ol' "telly!....".  Though,
	  of course from other networks they are pretty important.

I thought domains were supposed to make the maps smaller!
-- 
He's a consultant:             | Chris Lewis, Elegant Communications Inc.
Lend him your watch            | UUCP {uunet!attcan,utzoo}!lsuc!eci386!clewis
and he'll tell you the time.   | Moderator of the Ferret mailing list.
   Don Munroe, Cosmic Commander|