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.misc
Subject: Re: Another example why not to re-route
Message-ID: 
Date: 30 Nov 88 06:30:51 GMT
References: <352@lakart.UUCP>
Sender: vixie@decwrl.dec.com
Organization: DEC Western Research Lab
Lines: 44
In-reply-to: dg@lakart.UUCP's message of 28 Nov 88 21:36:54 GMT

[Goodenough]
# Take as an example the path Mr. Vixie's posting took to reach
# lakart from decwrl:
#
#	lakart!cfisun!ima!spdcc!bloom-beacon!husc6!purdue!decwrl!vixie
#
# as opposed to the "optimal" path from lakart to decwrl:
#
#	lakart!xait!garp!decvax!decwrl!vixie
#
# Now, if I'm footing the bill for transferring this information, which path
# do you think I'm going to use. From the point of view of people who spend
# quite a bit of money moving other people's mail around, they want to shorten
# up paths as much as possible to save their (& other sites) costs.

In various past articles I have answered this.  Basically, you should NOT
be using a netnews Path: line to send mail.  At one point I went so far as
to recommend that the character chosen to separate the hostnames in the
"Path:" line be changed to something other than a "!" since it looked so
much like a UUCP path that it was confusing a lot of people.  It is NOT a
UUCP path and if you send mail along a "Path:" and it works, you are lucky.

In times past there have been many "news only" links.  I think I might make
my home machine into a netnews hub for my area and not run mail on it, just
to get lots and lots of articles into the bitstream that cannot be replied
to via the "Path:" line.  This is in the spirit of "making things worse so
they'll get better," though, and it's a sad victory if it works at all.

There is NO REASON to use a "Path:" line to mail a reply to an author.  If
you want to run a full pathalias-based auto-router, you can get smail and
uuhosts and pathalias from a comp.sources.unix archive -- they're all free.
If you want to run a smail with no local database, you don't need pathalias
or uuhosts, you just use a "smart-host" in your paths file.  All your out-
bound traffic that you don't know the full route for will go to some smart
neighbor or near-neighbor.

Quoting myself:
# 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.

--
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