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From: debra@alice.UUCP (Paul De Bra)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.sysadmin,news.config
Subject: Re: French and UK sites wanted for EUcon.
Message-ID: <8813@alice.UUCP>
Date: 22 Jan 89 17:15:19 GMT
References: <96@i2ack.UUCP> <303@dcs.UUCP> <55538@pyramid.pyramid.com> <105@i2ack.UUCP> <459@eda.com>
Reply-To: debra@alice.UUCP ()
Organization: AT&T, Bell Labs
Lines: 49

In article <459@eda.com> jim@eda.com (Jim Budler) writes:
>In article <105@i2ack.UUCP> venta@i2ack.UUCP (Paolo Ventafridda) writes:
># 
># Previous message from Carl (csg@pyramid) perfectly describes the situation:
># i myself took notice of this, and i am doing my best to "lock" (reject)
># outgoing mail out of uunet and eucon. That is, any mail on EUnet.
>
>I feel appalled that in this time of increased connectivity, we now
>are creating a situation in which some people on Usenet cannot
>communicate with other people on Usenet.
>
>I have no desire to cast blame on anyone, but I feel that this situation
>is unacceptable.
>
I quite agree, but similar situations already exist, and that is creating
problems.

I can register a new system on uunet, claim that I will poll uunet every
5 minutes, and also pretend that I have a very fast (hardwired) link to a
machine "x". This new entry would be transmitted to everyone, and the
rerouting programs would route all mail for "x" through me. I could
easily intercept and/or toss all mail for "x". This is a very bad situation,
especially since mail DOES get tossed by systems. All AT&T operated Unix
machines for instance will only forward mail if it comes from a machine
within AT&T or goes to a machine within AT&T. If anyone reroutes a message
from somewhere to somewhere else through a machine at AT&T it will get
tossed.

Eunet seems to do the same: it will only forward mail that is originating
from or going to a Eunet site. (They may of course be including systems in
their Eunet list that are not really on Eunet.) 

This situation is bad mostly because any intermediate site could decide
to reroute a message through a "faster" path that will not let some
messages through.

Paolo's story shows another problem with Eunet: the cost is not the same
in all of Europe, and you are not free to choose your own backbone. The
EUUG is set up such that backbones in one country refuse serving EUUG-sites
in other countries, even when they would only be polled by the client.
In a country like Italy, with few Eunet members, you are really screwed
because the backbone seems to be extremely expensive (and I've heard this
not just from Paolo).

Paul.
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