Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ucsd!rutgers!bellcore!tness7!tness1!sugar!ficc!karl
From: karl@ficc.uu.net (karl lehenbauer#)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: active rerouting
Summary: It would be nice if smail could know if the path was autogenerated,
	 or generated by hand, and act accordingly
Message-ID: <1426@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 7 Sep 88 20:54:36 GMT
References: <4740@b-tech.UUCP> <4747@b-tech.UUCP> <4748@b-tech.UUCP> <4753@b-tech.UUCP>
Organization: Ferranti International Controls
Lines: 17

If one's mail had its route autogenerated by pathalias/smail, then one shouldn't
mind if another site reroutes it, right?  (assuming their maps are at least as
up to date as yours) I mean, you've already implicitly said that you trust 
smail to do the routing for you.  So shouldn't there be a way to differentiate 
between hand-routed (hard-routed) mail and machine-routed mail (a Routed-By
line?), and machine-routed mail could be rerouted by anyone who thought they 
had a better path, while hard-routed stuff would be hands off, unless 
undeliverable as addressed.  This way, one could still hammer out a route that 
works to a site that had a screwed-up map or path, or no map, in order to send 
mail to flame them into fixing it or whatever, but still get near-optimal 
routing (by pathalias' criteria) most of the time.  On the other hand, if the 
maps are up to date, sites "down the line" are going to generate the same path 
smail did originally.

Disclaimer:  I'm new to this stuff.
-- 
-- +1 713 274 5184, uunet!ficc!karl
-- Ferranti International Controls, 12808 W. Airport Blvd., Sugar Land, TX 77478