Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!edsews!roberts
From: roberts@edsews.EDS.COM (Ted Roberts)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Rerouting of explicit paths
Message-ID: <483@edsews.EDS.COM>
Date: 22 Mar 88 17:35:33 GMT
References: <327@vsi1.UUCP> <9@tness7.UUCP> <3544@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <2117@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Organization: EDS - Bloomfield Hills, MI
Lines: 35
Keywords: simple
Summary: a minor problem or two

In article <2117@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>, towfigh@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Mark Towfigh) writes:
> 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.

I don't claim to know all that much either, but a couple of problems with this
approach did strike me.  One example is that if you are trying to send to a
site named (the infamous tut example) tut and had a path all laid out.  Along
the way you run into a site that talks to the tut in (I believe it was) Finland
while the mail is actually directed to the tut in (I'm not sure about this one
either) New Mexico.  The path gets truncated, the mail goes to Finland, and
somebody wonders what the heck keeps happening to their mail.

> 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?

Yes it's true.  However this just makes things worse.  Any local machines that
you have could also screw up your mail paths.

> A second suggestion is perhaps a path-initial character ('#' for
> example) could be defined to make a path re-reouting explicit (or

I believe this has been mentioned before and it seems to me to be a good idea.
It would seem logical to me to use the character for those paths known to be
correct so that re-routing would be the default.  If some of the mail admins
from sites that reroute are reading, maybe they could comment on this.

-- 
Ted Roberts                         |  My opinions are not necessarily those
EDS Technical Services Division     |  of my employer.  Does that mean I'm
UUCP: roberts@edsews.EDS.COM        |  wrong?