Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!njin!brisco From: brisco@pilot.njin.net (Thomas Paul Brisco) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: A bigger problem (was: Mail survey #1) Message-ID: Date: 6 Sep 88 19:37:14 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> <3728@rayssd.ray.com> Organization: NJ InterCampus Network, New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 113 In article <3728@rayssd.ray.com> gmp@rayssd.ray.com (Gregory M. Paris) writes: > > .... > 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. > Extracted from site njin: njin [others ...], barfy(POLLED), [others ...] Extracted from site rutgers: rutgers [others ...], barfy(POLLED), [others ...] Extracted from site barfy: barfy rutgers(DAILY), [others ...], njin(DAILY) What is all that stuff on my disk then? If you want routing through them, then you should raise the (declared) frequency of the calls _to_ them. If you have other sites that _are_ calling you (a case which "barfy" does not have), then you need to juggle the weights to be in the ratio that you want them to be in. > > 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. Sounds like a good case for "RTFM". (or, more appropriately, RTFSourceCode) > The same goes for > FAST. Without looking up the numbers, which is faster, HOURLY+FAST > or DEMAND? Which should be faster? Quick - what is pi to 100 digits? (Hint: that is what computers are for) > > 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. Why do you care what cost site xxxxxx is advertising? If it's filling up your disk, then call postmaster@xxxxxx and get her/him to fix his/her maps. > > 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 I suspect that there is rarely a problem with links when they are first put in. The problems I have observed have been mainly with sites "falling off" and not mentioning it and not altering their maps correctly. I had one such similiar problem with a site -- I got about 2 meg backed up for them and then phoned the guy. I called him and he said that it was dead and not coming back. I asked him to update the map appropriately and he said he would. I had similiar conversations for every 2 meg that I accumlated. At 10 meg, I put the mail on a tape and gave it to him, and then deleted him from my local information. Thus - mail went a-bouncing back to whereever it came from (this elicited some complaints from the innocent - but I redirected them to him). I have also had very bad expriences with "postmaster" (even some at what I would normally consider "nice" sites, such as "fed" - a federal site). The problem is that at some places "administrator" is defined as "the first person that gets tired of having stuff blow up on them" - they usually have other jobs and don't want to spend much of their time doing "computer stuff". The other group is people who do things out of ignorance - these people usually respond quickly, and in best intentions. Contacting people of type "2" will usually work - contacting people of type "1" will probably never work. I (and I suspect you also) have better things to do time than call administrators who dont get their work done -- why actively look for further ulcer food? Also - how are {you,me} to know when a "good" administrator leaves a company/institution and is replaced by a "no-good" administrator? Do you suggest that I contact _all_ of the administrators that my machines talk to on some sort of regular basis? Telephone? email? The USENET is a _cooperative_ effort -- that means we all try to work together for the best overall effect (though sometimes our opinions differ in small ways); I'd suggest that you start dropping sites that do not conform (or attempt to conform) to the established standards and methods. It might sound a bit like overkill, but I would think that 3 or 5 steady sites would beat 20 undependable sites. Note: you should try notifying these people that you are dropping them before doing something as obnoxious as the above - I've only ever had need to do it once. Tp. -- ...!rutgers!brisco (UUCP) brisco@pilot.njin.net (ARPA) brisco@ZODIAC (BITNET) 201-932-2351 (VOICE)