Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bfmny0!tneff From: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Who pays the bill? Message-ID: <15709@bfmny0.BFM.COM> Date: 30 Jul 90 05:27:00 GMT References: <1990Jul29.073316.16433@vicom.com> <65517@sgi.sgi.com> Reply-To: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) Lines: 33 In article <65517@sgi.sgi.com> vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com (Vernon Schryver) writes: >Would it be rude to ask that those who choose to not honor the routes in >passing mail to not advertise their connections? Am I wrong in thinking >that the UUCP maps are not a way to brag of the number of UUCP links you >maintain, but are an offer to do a service, without expectation of payment >or even reciprocity? Well, I think part of the problem here is that link COST isn't always factored in. Sure, I can advertise links to 7 neighbors in the maps, but I may COST a number of them very high, and others cheaply. Now, 'pathalias' will look at this and try to do the right thing with routing. But if an inattentive user assembles a path by hand, without reference to the cost field, he may pick expensive LD links when a local call would have done. And that is rude, no doubt about it. Advertising a link is not the same as advertising a CHEAP link. When a site makes public an expensive LD link, it is implicitly relying on the courtesy of the net (and the brains of pathalias) not to misuse the facility. I sympathize with sites who reroute to minimize their costs, and I consider it good for the net as a whole because it lets more sites pass more messages per dollar. It might be interesting to try a Reroute: {No|Yes|Rightmost} header field. Let the sender indicate how free he's willing to let intermediate sites be with routing. If he cannot abide any rerouting of a message, but an intermediate site insists, bounce the message. -- War is like love; it always \%\%\% Tom Neff finds a way. -- Bertold Brecht %\%\%\ tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM