Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!onfcanim!dave From: dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Dynamic vs. passive routing: site rights Message-ID: <15923@onfcanim.UUCP> Date: 28 Aug 88 19:58:36 GMT References: <4902@netnews.upenn.edu> <92@volition.dec.com> <3769@bsu-cs.UUCP> Reply-To: dave@onfcanim.UUCP (Dave Martindale) Organization: National Film Board / Office national du film, Montreal Lines: 36 In article lear@NET.BIO.NET (Eliot Lear) writes: > >My goal is to improve connectivity as much as possible. I do that by >exercising my right to reroute. You can read my August 10 posting for >further information. It is my impression that smail, in its most conservative configuration, does the following with mail addressed to a!b!c!d!user: (1) If we talk to "a", send it to a - no rewriting at all. (2) If we don't talk to a, try to find a route to "a" using the USENET maps (3) If we can't find a route to "a" at all, try finding a route to other sites in the path, starting at "d" and working leftward. Note that this does "improve connectivity" as much as possible, in that it makes it seem that you talk to almost everybody. It may not always generate the shortest path to anybody, but it has the advantage that it never messes up a route that is already OK - it intervenes only when the alternative would be to reject the mail. The smail installation documents also tell you how to set things up so that you skip from (1) to (3) without trying (2). This still has the property of leaving alone mail that is correctly routed at the source, while usually picking "better" paths for mail that would otherwise fail. It is also possible to configure smail so that it always does (3), on every piece of mail, without trying (1). However, given the other two choices available, and given that omitting (1) causes problems for some people and may also cause routing loops, I don't understand why people configure smail this way. Dave Martindale