[net.sources] Readme for Network Mail Router

tim (06/18/82)

These routines make up an automated  routing  algorithm  for
the USENET.  In addition to this file there should be:

    nmail.c - the source program for the routing algorithm
    nmail.h - the header with changeable defines
    runme   - the shell script that does all the work for you
    sites   - the topology file of the network
    makenet - an awk program to convert the sites file to the
		necessary internal format of the network

The only editing you should have to do is to remove the news
header information.  The script in runme will prompt for the
name of your site and the full path where the topology  file
is to be placed.  Example: For my site it was

ucf-cs /usr1/vlsi/tim/net/network

For Mark Horton's site it might be:

cbosgd /usr/local/network

Note: the name can be anything  you  want, but  be  sure  to
specify the entire path name.  The program created is called
nmail which will find the shortest connection  path  to  the
specified site and execute mail passing that path.  Example:
>From my site typing

nmail cbosgd!mark dave unc.smb@udel-relay

will execute mail with the paths

duke!chico!harpo!cbosg!cbosgd!mark dave duke!decvax!ucbvax!unc.smb@udel-relay

Note: the first was a USENET path, the second  was  a  local
user,  the  third was an ARPANET (CSNET) address.  This pro-
gram is definitely inferior to the routing program just sub-
mitted to the net by unc!smb but the advantages of this pro-
gram are that it should install in under 5 minutes  with  no
changes to existing system software.  Also the total size of
everything is under 500 lines of commented code  verses  the
over  2500  lines  of  smb's.   I would recommend installing
smb's version but this will give you a quick and  easy  sub-
stitute  in the mean time.  The path generated is definitely
shortest but not necessarily the least cost since no  calcu-
lation of baud rates or polling frequencies is made.

                    Tim Curry
                    USENET:  duke!ucf-cs!tim
                    ARPANET: ucf-cs.tim@udel-relay