Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!gatech!udel!princeton!phoenix!towfigh
From: towfigh@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Mark Towfigh)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Rerouting of explicit paths
Message-ID: <2117@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 21 Mar 88 19:16:27 GMT
References: <327@vsi1.UUCP> <9@tness7.UUCP> <3544@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <410@ontenv.UUCP> <128@heart-of-gold>
Reply-To: towfigh@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Mark Towfigh)
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 26
Keywords: simple
Summary: Just an uninformed question

Since I know ZERO about the internal workings of mail, please do not
jump all over me if this is a dumb question.  But here it is:

Since it is generally agreed that certain kinds of rerouting are
bad, why not have a mailer which reroutes mail by starting at the
right of the ! path, trying to connect to each host, until it gets a
direct connection, and then pass it on?  At the very least it will
connect to the leftmost host, as the path should be correct.

Note that I am not assuming either an Internet or purely UUCP (=
telephone?) setup, at least I think I'm not; isn't it true that
Internet machines connect like telnet to send mail, and UUCP
machines call up a host?

It seems to me that this scheme circumvents the problem of automatic
re-routing through dead hosts, as the path is only improved if a
direct connection is found.

A second suggestion is perhaps a path-initial character ('#' for
example) could be defined to make a path re-reouting explicit (or
the other way, depending on which is preferable)?  That way people
who KNOW their path can specify it, while others can hope for a path
speed up by autorouters.

I would be interested to see comments on these two schemes,
especially if I have overlooked some important detail.