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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!mark
From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.adm
Subject: Re: The most expensive bug in the history of Usenet?
Message-ID: <2173@cbosgd.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 27-May-86 17:00:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.2173
Posted: Tue May 27 17:00:45 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 28-May-86 04:08:03 EDT
References: <221@epimass.UUCP> <1447@milano.UUCP> <722@smeagol.UUCP> <6709@utzoo.UUCP> <2070@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus, Oh
Lines: 30
Xref: watmath net.news:4919 net.news.adm:751

In article <2070@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU> jbs@mit-eddie.UUCP (Jeff Siegal) writes:
>In article <6709@utzoo.UUCP> henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes:
>>Do let us know how to implement pathalias on a 16-bit machine.  It can't
>>be done.  (We have local >16-bit sites we could lean on, but others don't.)
>
>Yes, but you can use the -l option to compile the database on a large
>machine and transfer it to the 16bitter.  If there isn't a larger
>machine nearby, perhaps someone on the net would be willing to compile
>pathalias databases, as a public service (obviously no more than one
>or two per day).

Lauren Weinstein supports RFC 976 on a floppy based IBM PC with MS DOS.
If he can do it, surely an 11/70 running UNIX can.

The basic trick is that if you don't have room on your machine for a
complete map of the world (or if your machine is a PC that goes through
a gateway for everything anyway, and you don't want to maintain a copy
of a world map on every PC you have) you use an incomplete map, and take
advantage of the domain structure.  Your software has a table showing
some local configuration information (your PC's name, your neighboring
PC's names, your gateway's name) and a default entry that says "anything
I don't recognize, I send to the gateway."  Then you put the full table
(or at least a fuller table) on the gateway.

Pathalias isn't strictly necessary, although you can still run pathalias
on a subset of the world map to get the same results.  pathalias itself
will run on an IBM PC (I know of one PC XT running PC/IX with pathalias),
as long as the data it's fed is fairly small.

	Mark