🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <613@cdx39.UUCP> jc@cdx39.UUCP (John Chambers) writes:
>A related topic that I haven't heard discussed:  We have some uucp
>links that are internal to the company, and are rather expensive 
>long-distance calls.  For company business, it is often a good 
>idea to encourage their use.  It's easier to uucp a big chunk of
>source code across a phone line than it is to mess with tapes or
>floppies, and it gets the job done much faster.  But management
>has some reasonable concerns that the outside world start using
>these links for mail.  

We (ncr-sd.UUCP) have had this problem for a while because of incorrect
costs associated with links over which we have no control.  From our
mod.map entry:

#
# Long-distance calls.	Ihnp4 is the AT&T mail hub in Indian Hill (near
# Chicago) that talks to just about everybody, and pyramid is in Palo Alto.
# These calls are more expensive, so we bias them accordingly.	Perhaps they
# should be EVENING, but sdcsvax lists all of its long-distance connections
# as DAILY and will cheerfully route everything from the San Diego area via
# us if we don't take precautionary measures.
#
ncr-sd	ihnp4(DAILY), pyramid(DAILY), cbosgd(DAILY), cbatt(DAILY)

The fix is actually quite easy.  We have local map information that is
needed to describe our local domain as well as private links.
Pathalias will use the cheapest cost given for any link so all we have to
do is include the real cost in our local map.  The values that we use are:

# The published information puts a high cost on these links so that other
# sites avoid routing through us.  This overrides that information so that
# we can use the links ourselves.....  The costs are carefully constructed
# so that we chose cbosgd in preference to ihnp4 whenever possible.  (They
# talk to each other with a cost of 95(DEDICATED).)
ncr-sd	ihnp4(HOURLY), cbosgd(HOURLY-94), cbatt(HOURLY-94-24), pyramid(DEMAND)

I'm in the process of creating a company-wide newsgroup so this information
can be automatically distributed.  Information within a domain can easily
be hidden by restricting the Distribution: to just that domain.  This also
allows us to publish changed information immediately, so internally at least,
our routing information is always up to date.
-- 
Matt Costello, matt.costello@SanDiego.NCR.COM (registered w/ CSNET)
	{sdcsvax,cbatt,dcdwest,nosc.ARPA,ihnp4}!ncr-sd!matt