Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!samsung!rex!wuarchive!texbell!ficc!peter From: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Paths and Precedence (Re: Question about From: lines) Message-ID: Date: 17 Jul 90 12:18:11 GMT References: <[$6je2.vl6@smurf.sub.org> Reply-To: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva) Organization: Xenix Support, FICC Lines: 33 In article urlichs@smurf.sub.org (Matthias Urlichs) writes: > Maybe I phrased this wrong. I _know_ that the people hanging off me are such > hosts. Like I said, maybe that's how things are in Germany, but here in the states Usenet is not a tree. Look at the postscript maps some time: you have this nice tree structure in Europe, and an incredible mesh of redundant links in the U.S.. Even clumps of sites hanging off the internet are going to look the same way, as individuals with PCs hook on and drop off. > The only problem was writing a Perl script which distills domainized host > names from the maps, and then aliases all UUCP names to domain names before > trying to get any intelligent routing done. After all, if anyone wants to send > his/her mail through a ten-hop path instead of directly beaming it across the > Internet, then that's their decision, but definitely not mine. Three points. What if that message contains material that violates the Internet's charter. Say, digitized playboy pics? Besides, I don't consider the growing dependence of Usenet on the Internet a healthy trend. If it wasn't for the independent nature of Usenet, your little subnet wouldn't have stood a chance. And there is still the problem of getting to sites that you know about but aren't in the maps? Not everyone publishes all their connections: look at the map entry for Intercon. And that's a site that fully supports domains! Finally, routing everything through the internet is expensive. That 10-hop path might be cheaper than sending the mail up the hierarchy and a few thousand miles to the friendly internet site you leach off, only to have it beamed back to a location 30 miles away. Better to send it through your buddy's system because a friend of his is a student at the local college. Hod do you find that out? The maps. -- Peter da Silva. `-_-' +1 713 274 5180.