Xref: utzoo comp.mail.uucp:1581 comp.mail.headers:376 Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!ucsd!ucbvax!decwrl!palo-alto!vixie From: vixie@palo-alto.DEC.COM (Paul Vixie) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,comp.mail.headers Subject: Re: what do _YOU_ mean by "all routing"?? Message-ID: <3732@palo-alto.DEC.COM> Date: 9 Aug 88 00:58:29 GMT References: <676@bacchus.DEC.COM> <881@vsi1.UUCP> <3674@palo-alto.DEC.COM> Organization: DEC Western Research Lab Lines: 49 brisco@pilot.njin.net (Thomas Paul Brisco) writes: # What I mean by "all my routing" is all my routing. I only # have to say "rutgers!foo!user" and let the rutgers mail look # up the path to site foo. So, it literally does *all my routing*. (I # don't know how else to say it). This is only a demonstration of _passive routing_, which is a Good Thing according to me and is quite different from what Rutgers actually does. If I send mail to rutgers!foobar!user, knowing full well that "foobar" is not a neighbor of Rutgers but that Rutgers will find a route, this is all very nice and very convenient and NOT what I am yelling about. What Rutgers actually does is _RErouting_. Not _passive routing_. Passive routing is where you always look for a way to send the mail to the next hop in the path as you see it -- and it means finding a route IFF that "next hop" is not a direct UUCP neighbor or an alias for a directly reachable internet site. Rutgers, on the other hand, will find a route to just about anything it can find in the path, starting from the RIGHT. From the END. Therefore if I send a piece of mail to ...!rutgers!foo!bar!baz!user, knowing full well that "foo" is a directly reachable neighbor of Rutgers, I have no guarantee at all that Rutgers will actually send to "foo". It will look first for a way to get to "baz", then to "bar", then to "foo", then finally give up if it cannot find any of the above. THIS IS WRONG. It's an option in Smail, and I wish they'd never have included it. The only possible justification is for replies along news paths, which are very long and usually circuitous. However, if you have a mailer smart enough to look something up in a routing database, you should be using the "From:" or the "Reply-To:", not the "Path:". RN and readnews both have this option available. If you have neighbors who reply using the "Path:", then you gain yourself nothing by rerouting the mail -- the message is coming through your system no matter which direction is leaves. If you want to do your neighbors a favor, tell them to make you their "smart-host" in their smail/pathalias database and reconfigure their RN or readnews software to use "From:". This way, the replies will come to your system more-or-less _asking_ you to find a route for them. I'll say it again: rerouting an explicitly routed piece of mail is rude; the practice always causes more confusion and anguish in the long run than any of its doubtful benefits ever pay anyone back for. -- Paul Vixie Digital Equipment Corporation Work: vixie@dec.com Play: paul@vixie.UUCP Western Research Laboratory uunet!decwrl!vixie uunet!vixie!paul Palo Alto, California, USA +1 415 853 6600 +1 415 864 7013