Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utcsrgv.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!dave From: dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman) Newsgroups: net.news Subject: Signatures to names and automatic path finding Message-ID: <1872@utcsrgv.UUCP> Date: Tue, 2-Aug-83 11:31:59 EDT Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.1872 Posted: Tue Aug 2 11:31:59 1983 Date-Received: Tue, 2-Aug-83 14:20:41 EDT Organization: CSRG, University of Toronto Lines: 33 Well, I sure have learnt something since posting my "gripe about the way people sign articles". Seems like a LOT of people out there don't have any kind of a path finder. So my *real* gripe is, why not? I'm not blaming any individual for not having it, now. But surely, in this day and age and with the size of the net at what it is, it's time for us to think about mechanisms for ensuring that mail can find its way around the net without human beings havings to sit down with a map or list and figure out paths by hand. I've discussed this by private mail with a couple of people, and it seems to me that ideally there should be a backbone site somewhere which can maintain the "official" list of connections; perhaps mail which fails for lack of a path could automatically trigger a request of that system to supply the correct path name (and requests in net.wanted with "path wanted" in their header would automatically be answered:-). A news reader who wanted to know a path could request that information by mailing to backbone!pathfinder (assuming he knew the path to backbone), and would get an automatic reply by return mail. Note that I said "ideally"; I've got a feeling that's not going to happen soon. What SHOULD happen is that some path finding program should be distributed as part of uucp, news, or whatever, and the various people around the net who maintain databases of connections on their own machines should co-ordinate efforts. I'm sure net.sources could tolerate a (say) semi-monthly posting of the "official" connections list, in a format usable by whatever pathfinder people want (I use nmail). Furthermore, using the 'r' key in readnews should pass only the final site name and user name (e.g., "utcsrgv!dave") to the mailer, and the mailer should be a pathfinding mailer by default. (I *never* use the 'r' key now - it's always "!mailto site!user" [mailto is our local name for nmail].) In the meantime, I've given up and gotten myself a .signature. Sigh. Dave Sherman, Toronto -- {linus,cornell,watmath,ihnp4,floyd,allegra,utzoo,uw-beaver}!utcsrgv!dave