🚀 go-pugleaf

I can see that the re-routers are unlikely to stop re-routing or
short circuiting so this argument is unlikely to have any useful
effect.

I generally feel that re-routers are treating a symptom and not
the cause of badly routed mail.  The cause of badly routed mail
lies with the user or the mailer which originated the mail.  So I
propose a solution:

  After re-routing the mail, the re-router should send mail to the
  orginator of the mail explaining what has happened and
  suggesting they see their local postmaster.  Something along the
  lines of:

  " Your mail arrived here using this route a!b!c and was routed
  to d!e!f!g.  However a more optimum path from your site to site
  'f' and user 'g' would have been a!b!j!f!g.  Your mail has been
  routed j!f!g from here.  Please consult your local postmaster
  for additional information. "

This will solve the cause of the problem, as users who guessed a
route will become gradually better informed about a better route
and the local postmaster (or whoever looks after the mail) will be
able to better configure his or her mailer.  If the problem lies at
another site then the postmaster should be able to deduce where
the problem lies and call up the postmaster at that site.
Hopefully over time the need for re-routing will gradually die
out.

Perhaps those who don't re-route could also generate messages like
the above to educate users about optimum mail paths.

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Short circuiting is a little harder to deal with.  The problem is
that it is harder to justify.  Paths that look like this:
   a.b.c.d!e.f.g.h!j.k.l.m!z
don't look good.  However paths like this:
   z%j.k.l.m%e.f.g.h@a.b.c.d
are justifyable (see my first posting which explains why this is
necessary).  No-one can claim that the above is equivalent to
   z@j.k.l.m
unless they hold up to date tables (and I MEAN up to date - even
to the point of getting local bulitins of machines that went down
that morning) of all the domains in use in the world today.

Even so, there will be some who think that they can short circuit
without problems, so perhaps they also should generate mail back
to the sender so they can query their postmaster to find a better
way of addressing their mail.

I feel that moves must be made to eradicate badly addresses mail
from the network, rather than trying to patch it up once its on
its way.  Sending mail back to the users telling them that they've
done it wrong is a start, it should make people look more closely
at how they address their mail - it might help.
-- 
  ______    JANET :jonathan@uk.ac.keele.cs     Jonathan Knight,
    /       BITNET:jonathan%cs.kl.ac.uk@ukacrl Department of Computer Science
   / _   __ other :jonathan@cs.keele.ac.uk     University of Keele, Keele,
(_/ (_) / / UUCP  :...!ukc!kl-cs!jonathan      Staffordshire.  ST5 5BG.  U.K.