Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!wuarchive!uunet!maverick.ksu.ksu.edu!deimos.cis.ksu.edu!mccall!tp From: tp@mccall.com Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Who pays the bill? Message-ID: <3270.26b4665b@mccall.com> Date: 30 Jul 90 16:54:50 GMT References: <26A738A8.725B@tct.uucp> <26B059CA.57CF@tct.uucp> Organization: The McCall Pattern Co., Manhattan, KS, USA Lines: 68 [This article is not directed at Eliot, per se, but to anyone who reroutes all mail based on the tail end of the path (such people are referred to as "you" below). This is not directed at people who reroute mail if it is otherwise undeliverable. I didn't receive the beginning of this thread, so I apologize if this is off the subject.] In article , lear@turbo.bio.net (Eliot) writes: > I consider it > evil and rude for you to even complain that any site from which you > derive a FREE service sends your mail by a faster and or cheaper path. Why not route the message to the first element of the path rather than the last? Since the first element of the path is a site your host presumably knows about (since you advertised that you did), there is little chance you will get it wrong. If you route to the end of the path, you will sometimes get it wrong. You have no guaranteed knowlege about anything in the path past the first link. It will often consist exclusively of uucp sites in the maps, but if it is anything else, you will likely break it. When the mail goes off into left field, it is either lost or bounced. Either way, you are unlikely to hear about it. It may happen more often than you think. Lord knows I'm not going to send mail to rutgers (the site nearest me that reroutes every piece of mail by the end links on the path) every time they derail one of my mail messages. I, and I expect many others, am more likely to try to find a useable route and try again. Note that this often means I must abandon pathalias and do explicit source routing by hand. You may be willing to address the problem, but many site admins aren't, and most people have better things to do than figure out that it was your site that blew it, and then contact you to explain it to you, just to get one lousy piece of mail delivered. It is usually possible to explicitly route around a system one way or another. Unfortunately, at this site I'll have to do it, as nobody else at this site knows how... > YOU are not paying the bill. If you are unwilling to let the link be used, why publish it? I don't deny your right to do whatever you want with the mail, but it is certainly impolite to advertise a link and then refuse to allow the useage of that link. Doing so may very well trick pathalias into sending a message to you that would otherwise have gone via a different route entirely. Does it cost you any more to use the minimal solution, rerouting to the first system on the path? My understanding of the maps, which appears to be different from yours, is that your map entry specifies that you will deliver mail to certain specific systems. Costs are given to indicate your degree of willingness to do this. Your understanding seems to be that the map entry is for describing physical connectivity only, with no implication of how routing through your system should be done. Correct me if I'm wrong. If that IS how you feel, I would submit that since the map entry is specifically intended to be input for pathalias, that routing information IS implied and your conclusion is incorrect. By the way, I don't care how you get mail to the next system in the path (one that you have advertised a link to), though it would be nice if the time delay in doing so corresponded in some way to the published cost. Pathalias will use whatever you give it. If you cost things appropriately, it should generate routes that accord with your local policies. -- Terry Poot The McCall Pattern Company (uucp: ...!rutgers!ksuvax1!mccall!tp) 615 McCall Road (800)255-2762, in KS (913)776-4041 Manhattan, KS 66502, USA