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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!houxm!gregbo
From: gregbo@houxm.UUCP (Greg Skinner)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: I am for splitting up the UUCP domain.
Message-ID: <1174@houxm.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 12-Mar-85 15:10:51 EST
Article-I.D.: houxm.1174
Posted: Tue Mar 12 15:10:51 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 13-Mar-85 01:21:55 EST
References: <1184@ukma.UUCP> <467@down.FUN> <634@plus5.UUCP> <1033@rocksvax.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 49

It was always my belief that auto-routing mail mechanisms should work only on a
host-by-host basis, rather than on a network global basis, due to the fact that
the database required to store all that information is huge, and the data is
never in a constant state.

I pushed a long time ago for a mechanism (like pathalias, but not with whole
netwide databases) which did autorouting on a machine-by-machine basis.  What
it would do is scan the From line for a host which it knew how to send to,
and optimize the path from there.  For example, if I want to reply to a message
which came to houxm as ...

Path: houxm!allegra!bellcore!decvax!genrad!user

and I know how to speak directly to user, the return-path would be op-
timized to

To: genrad!user

Failing to find a friendly neighbor in the Path:, it would keep a local cache
of neighbors who are likely to know how to get the message to the originator.
In the previous example, were I unable to speak directly to genrad, I would
counsult my L.sys file for my neighbors, and consult for each of them the
likelihood that they will be able to pass the message along to genrad. I could
store the neighbor's neighbors in the cache, or assign numbers to them indi-
cating the level of optimization that they could do.  An example of this would
be to assign 1 to something like ihnp4 (high connectivity), 2 to cbosgd (less
than ihnp4 but still pretty high).  I think you get the point -- it works like
pathalias, but doesn't have to have ultimate connectivity, nor does it even
have to know about all machines in the network, just has to know something 
about its neighbors.  When you consider the value of pathalias to a site with
only one news/mail feed, it would be more reasonable to adopt this sort of
strategy.  I was reading over Hokey's suggestion and it sounds somewhat like
mine, except he makes the claim that a backbone site can pass messages around
a "ring", so to speak -- I say that cheap routes can be found off the ring, if
adequate connectivity information can be supplied for an individual site's
uucp neighbors.

If you want the original I sent out a year and a half ago (that's when I first
joined USENET, although I've been an ARPAnaut for almost 5 years), let me
know and I'll send you a copy.

Also, let's keep this discussion in net.mail, ok?
-- 
			... hey, we've gotta get out of this place,
    			    there's got to be something better than this ...

Greg Skinner (gregbo)
{allegra,cbosgd,ihnp4}!houxm!gregbo
gregbo%houxm.uucp@harvard.arpa