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From: zeeff@b-tech.UUCP (Jon Zeeff)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: what do _YOU_ mean by "all routing"??
Message-ID: <4695@b-tech.UUCP>
Date: 12 Aug 88 14:20:06 GMT
References: <676@bacchus.DEC.COM> <881@vsi1.UUCP>  <3674@palo-alto.DEC.COM>  <3732@palo-alto.DEC.COM> 
Reply-To: zeeff@b-tech.UUCP (Jon Zeeff)
Organization: Branch Technology Ann Arbor, MI
Lines: 41

In article  ron@topaz.rutgers.edu (Ron Natalie) writes:

>feel compelled to make an answer.  The machine Rutgers (Rutgers.EDU
>actually) handles a lot of passthrough mail as well as being a USENET
>backbone site and a main feed point for machines in New Jersey.  We've

I have to agree that rutgers has been generous in providing usenet
with alot of services.  It is appreciated.

>for the expenditures on this machine, if you don't like the way it
>runs, you can feel free to route your mail elsewhere.
>

That's part of the problem - I can try and avoid rutgers (or any other
site), but with active rerouters out there, someone may change my paths
avoiding site xxx to go through xxx.  Active rerouting, which rutgers does,
makes it impossible to do what you suggest.

>well) than your average random UUCP site, needs the facility to optimally
>route mail rather than constraining it to follow the news paths (which
>are less richly connected than the mail feeds).  The alternative to
>doing rerouting is to drop mail transiting through Rutgers that isn't
>using a path that specifies the correct next hop (or giving up on

Depending on what you meant by "correct next hop", I believe that you 
missed one alternative, the one that most sites have decided is the 
best one.  How about only actively rerouting when the next hop is a
site you don't talk to directly.  If using news return paths are really
the problem, you might consider some method of attempting to identify
them - something like "this path is *really* bad, I'm going to
reroute it" or "this looks like a news reply via the path line".

>forwarding mail for people entirely such as ihnp4 has done).   Allowing
>us to reroute makes it feasible for us to provide this service at all.

Note that running an active rerouting site may reduce traffic for some
of the sites you talk to, but it does not reduce your traffic.

-- 
Jon Zeeff           		Branch Technology,
uunet!umix!b-tech!zeeff  	zeeff%b-tech.uucp@umix.cc.umich.edu