Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!hao!ames!amdahl!nsc!voder!tolerant!kennedy
From: kennedy@tolerant.UUCP (Bill Kennedy)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Rerouting of explicit paths
Message-ID: <1406@tolerant.UUCP>
Date: 11 Mar 88 17:04:01 GMT
References: <327@vsi1.UUCP> <9@tness7.UUCP> <3544@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <11@tness7.UUCP>
Reply-To: kennedy@tolerant.UUCP (Bill Kennedy)
Distribution: na
Organization: Tolerant Systems Inc., San Jose
Lines: 43
Summary: Solved the wrong problem

In article <11@tness7.UUCP> mechjgh@tness7.UUCP (Greg Hackney) writes:
>In article <3544@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> ambar@athena.mit.edu (Jean Marie Diaz) writes:
>>You're confused about what "rerouting" is.

[ deleted that not petaining to my point ]

>About rerouting....
>
>One of our Vaxen is serving as a netnews feed to several
>sites. It handles a lot of email replies to netnews articles,
>most of which have very very long bang style return addresses.
>
>The path that netnews takes, is hardly ever the shortest
>path that pathalias would come up with. I've seen it routed
>all over North America just to get to the machine next door.

I won't repeat my email reply to Greg, and I have already emoted about how
I feel about re-routing.  Also, I agree with the notion of re-routing news
replies until a better technique is developed to mail them.  I arbitrarily
re-route netnews replies by forcing the -r flag to smail in rn (I know that
might only work for me...).  But let's not confuse the issue.  Is it right
to superimpose a news solution over a mail problem to the detriment of the
mail system?

>If most of the sites did rerouting, a lot of time and money
>would be saved in my opinion. 

Poppycock and balderdash.  If you had to see the amount of LD paid, disk
space and cycles used to handle the bounces that these mailers generate...
well, poppycock and balderdash.  Some sites will actually hold mail they
can't deliver, most will pack it up and send it back.  Is that saving a lot
of time and money?

My point is that the news system is a lot better place to go tangle with the
goofy paths that come with news distribution.  That is done at my site before
it's ever introduced into the mail system.  It makes sense to me...  It just
wouldn't be all that hard to do.  If I wasn't abbreviating replies and my
news feed said he'd stop handling my mail until I did, it wouldn't take me
long to comply.

The opinions are my own, Tolerant is nice enough to let me use their equipment

Bill Kennedy {rutgers,cbosgd,ihnp4!petro}!ssbn!bill or bill@ssbn.WLK.COM