lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (09/16/83)
The inclusion of pathname data in the signature of outgoing messages
(unless the author's path is generally well known or a short hop
from a backbone site) is usually an excellent idea. The use of
netnews path information for mail replies is usually incredibly wasteful
of time and resources and sometimes won't even work. There are some
(rare) sites which forward news but not mail, and very many netnews paths
do not by the furthest stretch of the imagination approximate the
shortest UUCP path between two sites in most cases. I've seen
messages where somebody replied through a 14 hop netnews path when
they could have used a one or two hop address. This is one of the reasons
that I've campaigned against the use of the netnews feed data in the
Usenet directory for the compilation of automatic routing tables.
By the way, "major" sites are major for everyone! Just because a
given user may be a few hops away from a given major backbone site,
doesn't change the fact that the backbones are carrying primary traffic
and are easily identifiable. Even the most "backwoods" site will usually
know a solid path to one of the major backbone machines, so signing messages
in terms of the backbones (at least) makes a great deal of sense.
--Lauren--
{decvax,ihnp4,harpo,allegra,ucbvax!lbl-csam,randvax}!vortex!lauren