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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!ut-sally!ut-ngp!melpad!reality1!james
From: james@reality1.UUCP (james)
Newsgroups: net.news.sa,net.news.adm
Subject: Re: sendsys msgs and return paths
Message-ID: <35@reality1.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 16-Oct-86 02:03:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: reality1.35
Posted: Thu Oct 16 02:03:45 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Oct-86 22:35:04 EDT
References: <602@imagen.UUCP> <424@spdcc.UUCP> <30ac6214.1de6@apollo.uucp>
Organization: Reality Computer Systems, Austin TX
Lines: 23
Xref: mnetor net.news.sa:279 net.news.adm:729

In article <30ac6214.1de6@apollo.uucp>, rees@apollo.uucp (Jim Rees) writes:
> Only if your software is stupid.  Sending mail along the news path is
> anti-social at best, and wrong at worst.  The path only reflects the path
> the news took, and does not necessarily reflect an optimal, or even a
> valid, mail path.  Semi-stupid mailers (like the one we run) will look
> up a path in a pathalias data base given the site name of the target.
> Smart mailers will use Honeyman's pathparse to disambiguate the target
> and look up an optimal (modulo GIGO) path to it.

Unfortunately, sending mail along a news path is the highest probability
of success route.  As you point out, "optimal" != "valid" in paths.
Unfortunately, the real world being what it is, "optimal" (as defined by
mod.map postings) does not imply valid.  It doesn't imply optimal.

The problem is how reliable you consider the mod.map database to be.  Since
it is only as reliable as the individual site administrators, I view the data
with a good deal of mistrust.  The Path: data is known to recently have worked
in the opposite direction, and since I assume unidirectional or news-only
links are rare (the rarity of unidirectional links might be a bad assumption)
I would consider the Path: data reliable.  "A bird in the hand is worth two
in the bush..."
-- 
James R. Van Artsdalen    ...!ut-ngp!utastro!osi3b2!james    "Live Free or Die"