jeff@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Stearns) (05/27/87)
A question about pathalias and smail:
I run smail, using pathalias to build the database.
I have several UUCP neighbors which would prefer not to have
uucp mail relayed THROUGH them, yet are quite happy to have mail
delivered TO them.
How do I communicate this fact to pathalias? In other words,
how can I tell pathalias that we have a direct and inexpensive
route TO site x, yet routes THROUGH site x are costly?
--
Jeff Stearns 206-356-5064 new: jeff@tc.fluke.COM
John Fluke Mfg. Co. old: uw-beaver!fluke!jeff
P.O. Box C9090 Everett WA 98206 or: allegra!fluke!jeffwoods@hao.UUCP (05/27/87)
In article <921@sputnik.COM> jeff@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Stearns) writes: > I have several UUCP neighbors which would prefer not to have > uucp mail relayed THROUGH them, yet are quite happy to have mail > delivered TO them. > > How do I communicate this fact to pathalias? You mark the site(s) in question dead on the pathalias command line. We have a similar problem in that we talk to a site that has a name conflict with another site that is officially registered; thus, the paths "through" this site were bogus, so I had to prevent their generation. pathalias -d site1 -d site2 ..... This will cause pathalias to generate routes TO site1 and site2, but will avoid routes through them unless there is no other way. This sounds like exactly what you want. --Greg -- UUCP: {hplabs, seismo, nbires, noao}!hao!woods CSNET: woods@ncar.csnet ARPA: woods%ncar@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA INTERNET: woods@hao.ucar.edu
rick@seismo.UUCP (05/27/87)
I have browbeaten Honeyman into adding exactly this feature. (absoultely the "last" pathalias hack...). We have been calling them terminal nodes. The idea is to specify in the pathalias data that you should not be routing through these sites even if the cost is very low. It should be appearing "soon". ---rick
merlin@hqda-ai.UUCP (05/27/87)
As an interim hack, try declaring the terminal hosts as dead,
using the -d command switch. This causes pathalias to attribute a
very high cost to paths _through_ the named host, but does not
affect the cost to the host itself. The command would be
pathalias -d dead-host-1 -d dead-host-2 ... files
--
David S. Hayes, The Merlin of Avalon PhoneNet: (202) 694-6900
UUCP: *!seismo!sundc!hqda-ai!merlin ARPA: merlin%hqda-ai@seismo.css.govhoney@citi.umich.edu (Peter Honeyman) (05/27/87)
my brows are furrowed, not beaten. this "last hack" awaits the resolution of some questions. e.g., if a->b is a terminal edge, may b->c be used as an edge of last resort? or another, is an edge from a domain to a domain member terminal? (i.e., given seismo->.gov, .gov->lanl, lanl->beta, should pathalias condone seismo!lanl.gov!beta!%s? yes, because it's semantically unclean to do otherwise, or no, because this and many similar paths fail?) while rick and i ponder this and other earth-shattering minutiae, it still suffices to declare grumpy neighbors DEAD on the command line. peter
page@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) (05/27/87)
Another way is to remove the map entries for the sites in question.
Not too elegant, I know...
Yet another option is to use uumail instead of smail, which can
look in your L.sys for UUCP neighbors before looking in the
paths database. I think smail could use this too, although it doesn't
exist in version 2.3. Those that use "uupath" to look at the routing
then let "smail" do it will be in for a surprise sometime.
..Bob
--
Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept. page@ulowell.{uucp,edu,csnet} lyndon@ncc.UUCP (05/29/87)
> Yet another option is to use uumail instead of smail, which can > look in your L.sys for UUCP neighbors before looking in the > paths database. I think smail could use this too, although it doesn't > exist in version 2.3. Those that use "uupath" to look at the routing > then let "smail" do it will be in for a surprise sometime. This is not necessarily a Good Thing... We have sites in our L.sys that we don't want to call directly to feed mail. In our case, they exist to allow us to transfer large files on a sporadic basis. As it turns out, this same site spends most of it's time connected to another site, therefore it is faster to use the indirect route (in this case, cost is not an influencing factor). I'm sure there are other sites in the same situation. If something like this is to be added to smail, it should be made a configurable option that can be disabled.
page@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) (05/29/87)
I wrote: > Yet another option is to use uumail instead of smail, which can look in > your L.sys for UUCP neighbors before looking in the paths database. lyndon@ncc.UUCP (Lyndon Nerenberg) replied: >This is not necessarily a Good Thing... We have sites in our L.sys >that we don't want to call directly to feed mail. Just to clear up any possible confusion: it is an option in uumail; you do not have to use it if you don't want to. Sorry, I should have made it clearer. ..Bob -- Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept. page@ulowell.{uucp,edu,csnet}