Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!apple!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!purdue!decwrl!vixie From: vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul Vixie) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Another argument against REROUTE Message-ID: <803@bacchus.dec.com> Date: 17 Sep 88 01:38:26 GMT References: <350@ditka.UUCP> <5971@emcard.UUCP> Sender: vixie@decwrl.dec.com Organization: DEC Western Research Lab Lines: 22 # Is there a measureable need for re-routing at any sites that are not # backbone? (I really don't know) There is no measurable need for re-routing by any sites, BACKBONE OR NOT. There is no problem solved by re-routing that cannot be solved otherwise; there are problems CAUSED by re-routing that cannot be solved at all. Note that I am a strong proponent of ROUTING, which means that if someone sends to foo!bar!user and "foo" doesn't speak directly to "bar" but there is a "bar" in the UUCP map, "foo" can pick a route to "bar", probably based on pathalias output (with local "glue" to reflect sysadmin preferences and the state of the local topology). I'm talking about mail to foo!bar!baz!user that gets to "foo" who talks to "bar" directly but decides to send through some other host because it thinks it knows a cheaper way to get to "baz". The fact that neither the UUCP Project nor the sysadmin of "foo" will always know about the connection from "bar" to "baz" is what makes rerouting a very very bad thing to do. -- Paul Vixie Work: vixie@decwrl.dec.com decwrl!vixie +1 415 853 6600 Play: paul@vixie.sf.ca.us vixie!paul +1 415 864 7013