msimpson@bbncca.ARPA (Mike Simpson) (07/05/84)
*** 5 July 1984. Gary Benson (fluke!inc) has let go with a flood of invective that I cannot let go unchallenged, even in net.flame. (Gary's comments are preceded by ' >>'.) >> What kind of jerk is it who posts articles asking for paths >> to places? Probably well-meaning people who don't get (or haven't heard of) 'net.net-people'. (Please use it.) >> Haven't you pitiful troglodytes heard that there is a >> USENET map of the WHOLE WORLD posted regularly? Yes, Gary. And despite the best efforts of Mark Horton and Karen Summers-Horton (kudos to them both), there are occasional gaps. >> Don't you know that unix has a command called "path" >> to assist you in determining the shortest path from >> your machine to the one you want to post to? If you have a vanilla UNIX that has such a 'path' command, I'll eat my keyboard. The 'path' command on my machine searches directories to find a command. >> For those who are forever requesting path >> information, why don't you get up off your lazy butt >> and print out a copy of the map for the region you >> want to communicate(?) with? Not a bad idea, on the face of it. You could have noted, however, that the maps reside in newsgroup 'net.news.map'. Simply flaming isn't going to help some poor neophyte. >> And for the nerds who print 8 lines of garbage >> showing me the direct path into your account, I >> can't help but wonder what sort of inflated ego >> you must have that you think it necessary to proclaim >> in minutest detail the path from every machine in >> the known universe into your personal account. Probably more a desire to insure good communications -- lines do occasionally go down for no good reason, you know. Sounds like you're unnecessarily picking on your fellow Evergreen Stater Jeff Meyer, a/k/a moriarty@washington and fluke!moriarty. -- -- your obedient servant, Mike Simpson, BBN msimpson@bbn-unix (ARPA) {decvax,ima,linus,wjh12}!bbncca!msimpson (Usenet) 617-497-2819 (Ma Bell)
dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman) (07/06/84)
People who post requests for paths cannot always use the
Usenet net.news.map database. Not all mail (uucp) information
is recorded there, and in the future, net.news.map will not be
used for mail routing at all. The uucp network is at least twice
as large as the Usenet network.
Dave Sherman
--
{allegra,cornell,decvax,ihnp4,linus,utzoo}!utcsrgv!dave
or
David_Sherman%Wayne-MTS%UMich-MTS.Mailnet@MIT-Multics.ARPAspaf@gatech.UUCP (07/08/84)
Paths are non-trivial to find, especially if you're trying to
optimize delivery speed, minimize the number of intermediate
machines, or go through a local node first to reduce phone
costs. It is complicated by the fact that not all news relays
are also mail relays. And furthermore, there are a lot more
mail sites than there are news sites. My mail database lists
almost 3000 sites, but the news map has under 900 (last time
I counted).
Not afraid to let people know where to reach me,
--
Off the Wall of Gene Spafford
The Clouds Project, School of ICS, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332
Phone: (404) 894-6169, (404) 894-6170 [messages]
CSNet: Spaf @ GATech ARPA: Spaf%GATech.CSNet @ CSNet-Relay.ARPA
uucp: ...!{akgua,allegra,hplabs,ihnp4,masscomp,ut-ngp}!gatech!spaf
...!{rlgvax,sb1,uf-cgrl,unmvax,ut-sally}!gatech!spaf