Path: utzoo!mnetor!spectrix!yunexus!ists!mike
From: mike@ists (Mike Clarkson)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Rerouting of explicit paths
Message-ID: <156@ists>
Date: 7 Mar 88 06:27:47 GMT
References: <327@vsi1.UUCP>
Organization: I.S.T.S.
Lines: 28
Summary: Turn up the flame

In article <327@vsi1.UUCP>, lmb@vsi1.UUCP (Larry Blair) writes:
> I am not in favor of rerouting a local user's explicit path for several well
> known reasons, the greatest of which are that you can't avoid a temporarily
> dead host and that when someone's local machine matches a name in the maps,
> you simply CAN'T mail to them.
> 
> (FLAME ON!)
> As far as rerouting mail sent through your site goes, this should be considered
> to be a no-no subject to immediate de-netting!  A user several hops away has
> no way to know that you are going to screw up his path. 

I'm finding this happening a lot recently, and I agree.  I've never meet a
pathalias output file that didn't need some revisions, and many of the
re-routing routes are worse, not better than what they threw away.

> I propose that a new field be added to the map entry where sites that reroute
> other people's mail indicate so.

At least it would make it easier to spot the hosts that are re-routing.
Without knowing who's doing it, it's very difficult to track down mail
addressing problems.


-- 
Mike Clarkson						mike@ists.UUCP
Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science
York University, North York, Ontario,
CANADA M3J 1P3						(416) 736-5611