Xref: utzoo comp.mail.uucp:2422 comp.mail.misc:1429
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!vixie
From: vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul A Vixie)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: Another example why not to re-route
Message-ID: 
Date: 1 Dec 88 23:21:21 GMT
References: <140@minya.UUCP>  <1005@asylum.sf.ca.us> <2692@sultra.UUCP>
Sender: vixie@decwrl.dec.com
Organization: DEC Western Research Lab
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In-reply-to: dtynan@sultra.UUCP's message of 30 Nov 88 04:44:35 GMT

[Tynan]
# b)  "Hmm.  I don't want to use that link unless I have to"

Simplest solution to this is: don't advertise the path in your map entry.

# However, if someone wants to cost this particular site a lot of money, they
# could hand-route a whole pile of large mail directly to UUNET.

If they knew about the unadvertised link, and if they had dark intentions.

If and when this ever happened, I think an active response is better than the
passive response of rerouting.  Active in what way?  Yelling, screaming,
complaining, pulling links, public flamage, etc.  This assumes that sending
the person private e-mail doesn't work.

It gets pretty far fetched, but even this contrived example doesn't make a
case for limited rerouting.

I rerouted "decwrl!ucbvax!foobar.berkeley.edu!user" into the more direct
"user@foobar.berkeley.edu" because ucbvax is a Vax 750 and it can route
packets more easily than it can route mail messages.  I didn't want to
advertise decwrl as a domain server to the .berkeley.edu domain, but in
fact _any_ directly connected Internet host could be considered such since
Berkeley allows external IP traffic to all machines on its internal net.

_That_ is an example of limited rerouting to address a specific need.  It
wasn't a single individual, noone had any dark intentions, and noone came
up with a way to tell the world that "decwrl!foobar.berkeley.edu!user"
would work without bogusly registering "decwrl .berkeley.edu".


--
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