Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!ubvax!vsi1!lmb
From: lmb@vsi1.UUCP (Larry Blair)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: When to reroute (Re: active rerouting)
Message-ID: <1036@vsi1.UUCP>
Date: 27 Sep 88 21:51:17 GMT
References: <4740@b-tech.UUCP> <4747@b-tech.UUCP> <4748@b-tech.UUCP> <4753@b-tech.UUCP> <1426@ficc.uu.net> <6548@chinet.UUCP> <802@bacchus.dec.com>
Reply-To: lmb@vsi1.UUCP (Larry Blair)
Organization: VICOM Systems Inc., San Jose, CA
Lines: 19

In article <802@bacchus.dec.com> vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul Vixie) writes:
=# I would rather see a standard way to explicitly request a site to re-route
=# and everything else should be left alone if deliverable.
=
=You've got the seeds of your answer: if the supposed next-hop-to-send-to is
=not something you speak to "directly", feel free to reroute.  But if it's a
=neighbor which you've published in the UUCP Map (which is likely, if someone
=knows to try to use your connection to it), you should fulfill your implicit
=promise to deliver the darned message to the neighbor.

It's not often that I disagree with Paul on this subject, but in this case
I feel that he's trying too strickly to adhere to the no-reroute concept.

In the case of foo!bar!baz!user, foo has the right to use whatever path it
wants to to pass the mail to bar.  Foo's obligation is only to send the mail
to bar.  This satisfies Paul's "implicit promise" while allowing knowledgeable
adaptation for local conditions.
-- 
Larry Blair   ames!vsi1!lmb   lmb%vsi1@ames.arc.nasa.gov