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From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: dynamic routing for UUCP mail
Message-ID: <2706@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Tue, 11-Aug-87 21:55:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.2706
Posted: Tue Aug 11 21:55:11 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Aug-87 07:12:15 EDT
References: <915@bsu-cs.UUCP> <13680@topaz.rutgers.edu> <4577@felix.UUCP> <10149@orchid.waterloo.edu>
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Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
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Xref: mnetor comp.mail.uucp:754 comp.mail.misc:473

egisin@waterloo.edu (Eric Gisin) wrote:
> Is there any need to support the reply-to-Path mechanism of news anymore?
> I'm assuming sites without a smart mailer are small and have one uucp link
> to the outside world and a few local links. Is that reasonable?

No, it isn't.  The mail routing software is one more major subsystem
that requires ongoing maintenance.  I don't run it because I want to
have time for development rather than system administration.  The
occasional 30 seconds I take to look up some site's map entry with a
grep script is nothing compared to the time required to
configure, install, and deal with a major piece of software.

As postmaster on hoptoad I regularly catch mail that "smart" mailers have
misdirected, and send mail to the posmaster where they probably got munged.

My sense is that many of the sites running smail are either large sites
with somebody permanently assigned to doing 'system administration', or
small sites where the owner finds it easier to maintain the software than
to understand the connectivity of the Usenet :-).

> I think anyone with a number of long-distance links would install
> a smart mailer for the obvious economic benefits.

Uh, what obvious economic benefits?  I'll be glad to hear of 'em, but
I already know which sites are local to me and how to route through them.
I also know how to be a good neighbor and send big stuff via paths that
the sender or recipient pays for, rather than the intermediate nodes.
I don't think smail is that smart yet.
-- 
{dasys1,ncoast,well,sun,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu	     gnu@postgres.berkeley.edu
Alt.all: the alternative radio of the Usenet.