Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!yale!ox.com!mudos!mju From: mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Who pays the bill? Message-ID: <26yPN2w162w@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us> Date: 11 Aug 90 04:21:12 GMT References: <1776@utoday.UUCP> Organization: The Programmers' Pit Stop, Ann Arbor MI Lines: 43 sean@utoday.UUCP (Sean Fulton) writes: > In article lear@turbo.bio.net (Eliot > >started, remember?). So long as they provide reliable service, you > >really have no basis for complaint. > > That would be like complaining which streets the postman drove down > with your letter, right? Ah, finally, a good analogy. Let's say that your postman usually takes Main to Fourth, turns left, takes Fourth to Elm, and then turns right to get to your house, which is 822 Elm St. This path could be expressed as "post-office!main!fourth!elm!822.elm!Sean-Fulton". Now, let's say that today, I know that they're ripping up Elm between Fourth and your house, so I want the postman to go around the construction by taking Main to Fifth, taking Fifth to Elm, and then turning left. So I manually route the mail "post-office!main!fifth! elm!822.elm!Sean-Fulton". If the post office is not a DARR, my mail will get where it's going. If the post office *is* a DARR, then they will reroute the mail to take Fourth, and it will bouce because the postman can't turn right onto Elm from Fourth; the street is all torn up. In this case, the DARR breaks a working path when it reroutes the mail. Sure, driving all the way to Fifth and then driving back parallel to Main on Elm may not be the optimal route, but in this case, it's the only way the mail will get there. A good idea would be to include a "Reroute:" header in mail. Setting it to "Yes" would be the default value and allow rerouting to the next host in the path, but not past there. Setting it to "No" would mean that the host is to follow the path exactly as you have it laid down; if the host isn't directly connected to the next hop, the mail bounces. Setting it to "Rabid" would let the host do what it pleases with the path, including short-circuiting to the last host in the path, or the last FQDN, or whatever. (Perhaps "Rabid" should be the default instead of "Yes".) -- Marc Unangst | mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us | Angular momentum makes the world go 'round. ...!umich!leebai!mudos!mju |