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From: honey@down.FUN (Peter Honeyman)
Newsgroups: net.news.config
Subject: Re: Abuse of ``DIRECT'' in Usenet maps
Message-ID: <526@down.FUN>
Date: Thu, 4-Jul-85 23:20:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: down.526
Posted: Thu Jul  4 23:20:29 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 5-Jul-85 08:10:22 EDT
References: <1738@amdahl.UUCP>
Organization: Princeton University, EECS
Lines: 12

pathalias lacks a distinction between local and long-distance calls.
of late, DIRECT has been used to represent local calls.  for what it's
worth, this meets with my approval.

something pathalias has never had is a clear criterion for optimality.
for the most part, pathalias attempts to minimize delay, but there are
other considerations, e.g., dollar cost, shunning ambiguous addresses,
avoiding traversals through closed networks, etc., etc.  anyone with
the latest version (for instance, you, gordon) might peek at the
heuristics in mapit.c.  i get grossed out (and i wrote it!).

	peter