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From: torben@dorsai.ics.hawaii.edu (Torben N. Nielsen)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: routing in the user agent
Message-ID: <101@dorsai.ics.hawaii.edu>
Date: Mon, 28-Sep-87 05:00:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: dorsai.101
Posted: Mon Sep 28 05:00:44 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 29-Sep-87 06:14:10 EDT
References: <7333@e.ms.uky.edu> <1631@umix.cc.umich.edu> <1599@ukecc.engr.uky.edu>
Reply-To: torben@dorsai.ics.hawaii.edu (Torben N. Nielsen)
Organization: Dept. of ICS, U. of Hawaii
Lines: 39

In article <1599@ukecc.engr.uky.edu> edward@engr.uky.edu (Edward C. Bennett) writes:
>In article <1631@umix.cc.umich.edu> honey@citi.umich.edu (Peter Honeyman) writes:
>>In article <7333@e.ms.uky.edu> david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron) writes:
>>>At the moment our problem with it [mush] is that
>>>	1. It wants to do routing ... That feature can be turned
>>>	   off, but still it doesn't belong in a User Agent.
>I must disagree. With the advent of domains, users aren't supposed
>to need to know about routes any more. DA's are the ones that know
>all the good routes to places. That way, all a UA has to know is
>how to compose and submit a piece of mail.
>
>HOWEVER, I, as a user, should still be able to use, say,
>	mail ukma!cbosgd!mtuxo!mtune!rutgers!citi!honey
>and not have anything mess with the route.

I have to agree with David. User's should not know ANYTHING about the route a
given message will take. The UA should only know how about addresses and the proper
format of the message itself. All issues of routing should be handled through an
MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) such as ``sendmail" (using appropriate databases 
generated through ``pathalias" or some similar tool).

Can anyone site a single advantage of having users know about routes? The argument
about the maps frequently being out of date doesn't hold water. Experience shows
that users are far more out of date than the maps. Maybe we should all put some
more effort into assuring that the maps ARE kept up to date :-)

Consider what users do when they use explicit path routing. since the paths are
so long, they typically use some sort of aliasing facility. That works fine until
there's a problem with some site. Maybe they are dropping mail or have simply
disappeared from the net. If the MTA handles all routing, I could very quickly
remove the site in question from the database (at the first indication of trouble)
and mail would be routed around that site. Except for the mail coming from users
with long established aliases that contain full routes. Their mail might disappear
into nowhere and guess who gets blamed for it....

Users should be concerned with addresses and not routes. Do you want to tell the
postman the exact path he should take in order to deliver your letter? I think
not. Teach the postman how to do do routing, tell him the address and leave it
at that.