root@sultra.UUCP (The Super User) (09/20/88)
Ok, here are a few unsolicited comments;
First, what happened to news.stargate? I am *very* interested in the stargate
system, but can find no newsgroup which refers to it. Where should I look for
info on what's going on?
Second, is there some reason that the pathalias output shows the COMPLETE
route for each site? I mean, as an example;
ames mips!wyse!vsi1!ames!%s
In this case, I already have the following entries;
mips mips!%s
vsi1 mips!wyse!vsi1!%s
wyse mips!wyse!%s
It would make more sense to me, to do the following;
ames vsi1!ames!%s
mips mips!%s
vsi1 wyse!vsi1!%s
wyse mips!wyse!%s
The two problems I see with this are 1/ it takes longer to resolve a path, and
2/ it *may* be beneficial to use a different path to C (via B), than to B,
although I can't think of such a case, and even if one did exist, one could
use the full route in that case. For those of us with smaller systems, having
a paths file that wasn't as big would be a big win. I'm running SysV, so DBM
is not present. Another possibility would be to use a uniform binary path,
that wouldn't use DBM or anything else. In other words, something with a
conversion table up front to convert ASCII system names to 16 (24? 32?) bit
numbers, followed by an index table to reference the path for that system, and
finally a list of paths, using binary system names (which can be back-indexed
to the actual names). I don't claim to be an all-out pathalias expert, I'm
just putting this forward for comment/flaming. Please use email to reply, and
I'll post a summary. I can't really see any good reason for having the paths
file in ASCII, and redundant. Comments, please???
- Der
BTW: sultra appears in the Southern California maps, instead of Northern
California, so if you're looking for us...