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