Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!alberta!ubc-cs!uw-beaver!tektronix!uunet!mcvax!hafro!gunnar From: gunnar@hafro.is (Gunnar Stefansson) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Dynamic vs. passive routing: site rights Message-ID: <110@hafdjup.hafro.is> Date: 28 Aug 88 13:57:52 GMT Reply-To: gunnar@hafro.is (Gunnar Stefansson) Organization: Marine Research Institute, Reykjavik Lines: 47 From article <898@l.cc.purdue.edu>, by cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin): > 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. > > Exercising your right to reroute should give you the responsibility for > correcting delivery failures due to rerouting. Sorry, Herman - and most of you, but you really have got it wrong. It should be a fellony to post incorrect map data which causes mail to bounce. When map data is correct, there is never any need at all for the user to do routing, and as you may have noticed, these bang paths are among the most difficult to teach new users. Rerouting is really only needed when one gets ridiculous paths, but that does tend to be most of the time at the backbones. Also, there is no way to justify the extra cost incurred when replies to news articles go all over the world before reaching the destination in the same state. Installing smail and either using an up-to-date map database or getting access to a good smart-host means that the users never have to know a route, ever. Errors "due to rerouting" are not the problem. The problem is site administrators who allocate names without checking for uniqueness, administrators who allow sites to hook up without asking them to register in the maps and administrators who don't install a domain-based mailer, such as sendmail or smail. These are the culprits who are costing us money. A case in point : Some silly administrator told a user that the path to Iceland from California went through kddlabs. The user promptly advertised this to all his friends. Sorry folks, but the route to California from Iceland does not go via Japan. Do you guys really want me to pay for those phone bills. Come on, don't be ridiculous. When I reroute, that is simply to see to it that things work as well as possible. If an error occurs, that is due to a map entry being incorrect and that is where the problem should be corrected. Remember : humans should not have to do jobs like routing, which computers can do much better. Gunnar