Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!umich!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!PUCC!MAINTCMS From: MAINTCMS@PUCC.BITNET (John Wagner) Newsgroups: bit.listserv.nodmgt-l Subject: Re: :routtab tableformat for NJEF Message-ID: Date: 9 Feb 90 15:19:32 GMT Sender: Node Management Discussion Reply-To: Node Management Discussion Lines: 36 Approved: NETNEWS@PSUVM Gateway In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 8 Feb 90 14:03:02 PST from <1GTLEJS@CALSTATE> On Thu, 8 Feb 90 14:03:02 PST Ed Skochinski said: >We now treat :netsoft as informational only. This is obviously local >data, let's remove it. If I read the descriptions correctly, tags >:nodedesc, :machine, :system, and :remarkN are local. Keep them out of >BITEARN NODES. I assume that the wars over inclusion of these tags are >long since over. Why should we tolerate this local data, and at the same >time forbid information which enhances the service provided to a member's >site? Ed, I would argue that :nodedesc, :machine, :netsoft and :system are not local data. I often use these in my job as postmaster to try to detemine what I should be seeing in mis-routed mail (i.e. why did I get back PMDF Receives: from a VM system that I know is running MAILER?). :netsoft tells you what kind of commands you can issue to the node. To me these are not the same sort of entity as the additional info in the :routtab tag that started the whole discussion. These are people usable. Despite my earlier statement to the contratry, the :routtab can not be used by a person, except to see if a node claims someone is generating routing tables for it. Maybe I'm crazy, but to me it seems much more important to know the routing tool is producing valid routes. That to me is the most important service being provided. It is already known that GENROUTS cannot produce correct routing tables for some network configurations. I don't know if GR has been validated, but I sure hope it will be. I do know that the time to validate it will be substantial. In the same vein of removing local info from the :routtab tag, Mike Gettes and I have talked a little about the O= value for JES2 systems. I'm not familiar with how the routing tables for JES2 works. Is there any reason a generic table couldn't be created (with the node number in the appropriate field but without the offset applied) and then post process this table to add the local offset value? Would some JES2 folk post how those numbers are used?