Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cwjcc!gatech!rayssd!gmp From: gmp@rayssd.ray.com (Gregory M. Paris) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: A bigger problem (was: Mail survey #1) Message-ID: <3728@rayssd.ray.com> Date: 6 Sep 88 03:43:00 GMT References: <4740@b-tech.UUCP> <4747@b-tech.UUCP> <4748@b-tech.UUCP> <3703@rayssd.ray.com> <4750@b-tech.UUCP> <3710@rayssd.ray.com> <4753@b-tech.UUCP> <3722@rayssd.ray.com> Sender: gmp@rayssd.ray.com (Gregory M. Paris @ Raytheon Company, Portsmouth RI) Reply-To: gmp@rayssd.RAY.COM (Gregory M. Paris) Organization: Raytheon Submarine Sandwich Division Lines: 49 In lear@NET.BIO.NET (Eliot Lear) writes: > What you are saying is that there are two sources of the same > information, and they tend to lose sync with each other quite often. Or were never in sync to begin with. > The first source is what is actually the case, and the second is what > is in the map entries. Perhaps the best way to irradicate this > dichotomy is to make a program that would generate pathalias entries > for each system, based on UUCP connections listed in an L.sys file, Yipes! Judging by how many sites run arbitron, I don't think this idea has a chance in hell of flying. Besides, it can't work properly. For instance, this site calls several others that never call us. I want our mail to come in through some of those sites. Using a program like the one you suggest, their cost to us would be POLLED and mail would never come to us through them. Not a win. I was thinking more along the lines of changing pathalias or the way the maps are generated and/or verified. Some ideas: 1. The cost names are all wrong. People think that LOCAL means any site that's close, even if you never call them. This thinking is often incorrect, but inspired by the name. The same goes for FAST. Without looking up the numbers, which is faster, HOURLY+FAST or DEMAND? Which should be faster? And are there really any sites that call each other WEEKLY? 2. I want to be able to tell the rest of the world that site xxxxxx is wrong about the cost of calling my site and that the cost is *higher* than what xxxxxx is advertising. 3. Maybe map coordinators should check with both sides of each link before publishing map entries. New links, at least, should be checked out before being published. New sites should have all links checked before being published. 4. No map data for a site should be published unless the postmaster alias for the site is proved to get human attention. Many sites seem to ignore all mail to postmaster. (I found about five such sites last year when I was getting bombarded by 100 letters a day from an insane mailer and couldn't find a contact to stop it.) -- Greg Paris {decuac,gatech,necntc,sun,uiucdcs,ukma}!rayssd!gmp NO KILL I