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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!seismo!munnari!kre
From: kre@munnari.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Smail is a snail mailer?
Message-ID: <1679@munnari.oz>
Date: Wed, 10-Jun-87 10:16:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: munnari.1679
Posted: Wed Jun 10 10:16:58 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 15-Jun-87 06:00:59 EDT
References: <1747@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU>
Distribution: comp.mail.uucp
Organization: Comp Sci, Melbourne Uni, Australia
Lines: 28
Keywords: smail, NTT, Japan

In article <1747@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU>,
okuno@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU (Hiroshi Okuno) writes:
> Recently, we have a very strange experience.  That is, messages
> sent in West Germany to nttca were delivered via unido (West Germany),
> mcvax (the Netherlands), kddlabs (Japan), xx.ll.mit.edu (U.S.A.),
> rutgers.edu and shasta.stanford.edu.

Our maps show a link from nttlab to nttca, and we would route
to nttca as munnari!nttlab!nttca!user.

I guess mcvax thinks the same, that to get to nttca, the best way
is via nttlab, and the best way to there is through kddlabs.

But then, given the route you suggested, I assume that kddlabs
knows that it can't route its mail to the US via ntt's link, and
sends the mail to seismo instead, from there it goes over the
rutgers-shasta-nttca path.

I suspect that this is all a result of the Japanese network's
partitioning into the 3 more or less separate parts for the
purposes of foreign links -- none of the routing software understands
this.  The only way to cope is probably going to be to
make it appear (outside Japan) that the 3 groups simply don't
communicate with each other at all.  Internally, the links would
need to exist, so mail from one site to another isn't routed via
the US or Europe (or both!)

kre