Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!nrl-cmf!ames!oliveb!pyramid!voder!tolerant!kennedy
From: kennedy@tolerant.UUCP (Bill Kennedy)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Rerouting of explicit paths
Message-ID: <1438@tolerant.UUCP>
Date: 22 Mar 88 16:42:59 GMT
References: <327@vsi1.UUCP> <9@tness7.UUCP> <3544@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <410@ontenv.UUCP> <128@heart-of-gold> <2117@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Reply-To: kennedy@tolerant.UUCP (Bill Kennedy)
Followup-To: bill@ssbn.WLK.COM
Distribution: na
Organization: Tolerant Systems Inc., San Jose
Lines: 44
Keywords: simple
Summary: It isn't a felony after all

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
[ suggestions on what direction to parse path ]

>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.

As one of the louder whiners/screamers on this subject I have found a case
where re-routing might be a big help (did *he* say that?).  This, of course,
presupposes that the volunteered path is a good one.  If you are sending a
mail message to a large list of addressees (I coordinate a large mailing
list) and you are using smail, smail will pack as many addressees into an
rmail event as will fit into the buffer size you specify at compile time.
If you specify a bang path to the re-routing host and nothing else but the
destination site and user you can fit more addressees into a single uucp
file.

The list rutgers!site1!user1 rutgers!site2!user2 ... turns into a uux
command rmail site1!user1 site2!user2 ... whereas if you used an "@"
path or somesuch your local smail would try to make a bang path out of
it, undoubtably longer than site!user.

This only applies (is useful) if the re-router is a very near neighbor
with no "volunteers" in between and where the same piece of mail goes
to many addressees.  I have yelled enough about it where it's to a single
addressee with a known-to-work path (I stand by all that yelling) so I
thought it would be useful to cite a case where it's helpful.

I think that Mark's proposal is OK but like a similar proposal I made a
while back, I think it only applies to sites with the source to their
mailer and I would guess they are in the minority.  Further there would
have to be some motivation/justification to dig into the mailer to put
in the "new rules".  In the interim it might be a worthwhile effort for
each site to check their map again and make sure it accurately reflects
their uucp connections.  I suspect that some of the atrocities that rutgers
has been accused of were the result of stale or inaccurate map data (even
some of the ones that I accused them of :-)

The opinions are my own, Tolerant is nice enough to let me use their equipment
please don't blame them for me.

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