Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!esosun!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!sceard!mrm
From: mrm@sceard.UUCP (M.R.Murphy)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: pathalias use of (ARPA)
Keywords: ARPA
Message-ID: <854@sceard.UUCP>
Date: 11 Nov 88 02:54:01 GMT
Organization: Sceard Systems, Inc., Carlsbad, CA
Lines: 44

Extracted from comp.mail.maps/README
# PATHALIAS DATA (or, documenting your UUCP connections & frequency of use)
# 
# The DEMAND, DAILY, etc., entries represent imaginary connect costs (see
# below) used by pathalias to calculate lowest cost paths.  The cost
# breakdown is:
# 
# 	LOCAL		25	local area network
# 	DEDICATED	95	high speed dedicated
# 	DIRECT		200	local call
# 	DEMAND          300     normal call (long distance, anytime)
# 	HOURLY		500	hourly poll
# 	EVENING		1800	time restricted call
# 	DAILY		5000	daily poll
# 	WEEKLY		30000	irregular poll
# 	DEAD            a very high number - not usable path
# 
# Additionally, HIGH and LOW (used like DAILY+HIGH) are -5 and +5
# respectively, for baud-rate or quality bonuses/penalties.  Arithmetic
# expressions can be used, however, you should be aware that the results
# are often counter-intuitive (e.g. (DAILY*4) means every 4 days, not 4
# times a day).  This is because the numbers represent "cost of connection"
# rather than "frequency of connection."
# 
# The numbers are intended to represent cost of transferring mail over
# the link, measured very rougly in elapsed time, which seems to be
# far more important than baud rates for this type of
# traffic.  There is an assumed high overhead for each hop; thus,
# HOURLY is far more than DAILY/24.
# 
# There are a few other cost names that sometimes appear in the map.
# Some are synonyms for the preferred names above (e.g. POLLED is assumed
# to mean overnight and is taken to be the same as DAILY), some are
# obsolete (e.g.  the letters A through F, which are letter grades for
# connections.) It is not acceptable to make up new names or spellings
# (pathalias gets very upset when people do that...).
# 
I notice that the value "ARPA" is now in use by some sites in Europe
and by mcnc in North Carolina :-).
What is the numeric value of "ARPA"? Note the last sentence of the
extracted material above. Comments?
--
Mike Murphy  Sceard Systems, Inc.  544 South Pacific St.  San Marcos, CA  92069
UUCP: {nosc,ucsd}!sceard!mrm     INTERNET: mrm%sceard.UUCP@ucsd.ucsd.edu