Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!oliveb!tymix!epimass!jbuck
From: jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: pathalias ignores fast Internet connections
Keywords: if else do
Message-ID: <3288@epimass.EPI.COM>
Date: 8 Jun 89 18:31:58 GMT
References: <1207@altos86.UUCP>
Reply-To: jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck)
Organization: Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, CA
Lines: 29

In article <1207@altos86.UUCP> clp@Altos.COM (Chuck L. Peterson) writes:
>When sending mail from here to places on the Internet such as
>user@machine.berkeley.edu, pathalias gives me this path:
>	uunet!mtxinu!ucbvax!machine.berkeley.edu!user
>
>Clearly, the optimal route is:
>	uunet!machine.berkeley.edu!user
>
>The funadamental flaw in the smail system I have (2.5), is that
>it assumes the only way to domains such as berkeley.edu is via
>uucp to the domain's main machine; "ucbvax.UUCP" in this case.

This is not a flaw in the smail system; it's a flaw in the UUCP map
data.  Specifically, since .berkeley.edu is an Internet domain,
it should not be listed in the UUCP map, and neither should any
host foo.berkeley.edu.  This would make the map smaller, and
furthermore, smail will then generate the optimal route you describe,
provided that you have the line

.edu	 uunet!%s

in your /usr/lib/uucp/paths.

Let's delete all domains that are on the Internet from the UUCP map.
The map will get smaller and we'll actually generate better routes.


-- 
-- Joe Buck	jbuck@epimass.epi.com, uunet!epimass.epi.com!jbuck