Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!faline!thumper!ulysses!andante!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!lll-tis!mcb
From: mcb@lll-tis.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.admin,comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Internet Paths in UUCP Maps -- Can We Stop?
Summary: Response to "Second try"
Message-ID: <22248@tis.llnl.gov>
Date: 3 Jun 88 00:03:01 GMT
References: <25550@pyramid.pyramid.com> <300@ncar.ucar.edu> <9512@e.ms.uky.edu>  <25756@pyramid.pyramid.com>
Reply-To: mcb@tis.llnl.gov (Michael C. Berch)
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore CA
Lines: 33
Posted: Thu Jun  2 20:03:01 1988
Xref: utzoo news.admin:2420 comp.mail.uucp:1337
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!faline!thumper!ulysses!andante!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!lll-tis!mcb
From: mcb@lll-tis.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.admin,comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Internet Paths in UUCP Maps -- Can We Stop?
Summary: Response to "Second try"
Message-ID: <22248@tis.llnl.gov>
Date: 3 Jun 88 00:03:01 GMT
References: <25550@pyramid.pyramid.com> <300@ncar.ucar.edu> <9512@e.ms.uky.edu>  <25756@pyramid.pyramid.com>
Reply-To: mcb@tis.llnl.gov (Michael C. Berch)
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore CA
Lines: 33

I'm beginning to get a glimmer of what Carl means in the "Second try",
but I still don't think I agree with the underlying assumptions.
Assuming that everyone is being honest (or at least rational) about
the pathalias cost of their links, both UUCP and Internet, then we
must assume that in the absence of pathological behavior the least
cost (i.e., "most efficient") routes are chosen.  

One problem is that the pathalias constants (at the lower numeric levels;
you don't see too many "WEEKLY" entries any more) are stated as "grade of
connection" ("DIRECT", "DEDICATED") but people attempt to derive cost
and speed of delivery from them.

In many cases multiple hop SMTP service is *much* quicker than
single-hop UUCP service, and for people whose network costs are not
(yet) usage-sensitive (hint, hint), it is cheaper as well.

We only list internet connections in the map entry when we have a
TCP-UUCP connection with the site as well, so that mail to 

	!foo!bar

will succeed if we have a TCP-UUCP connection to foo.gov, but

	bar@foo 

will fail since foo is not in our local domain; 

	!foo.gov!bar

is handled by the sendmail config and will succeed in any case.

Michael C. Berch 
mcb@tis.llnl.gov / {ames,ihnp4,lll-crg,lll-lcc,mordor}!lll-tis!mcb