🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1992Jan31.055221.15871@Sandelman.OCUnix.on.ca>, Mike Richardson
pointed out some interesting problems with the routes generated from
the UUCP maps, especially considering ocunix's new connection and MX
to mail.uunet.ca.

Some suggestions that might help:

+ The uunet<->uunet.ca link is marked DEDICATED, which means that just
  about all traffic into the Ontario region will try to use that
  route.  (By default, uunet.ca marks customers terminal (<>) and
  DIRECT, unless they request otherwise)

+ If you have both an internet name and a uucp name, please
  ensure your map has a

internetname = uucpname

  line in it, and that your mailer can gracefully receive mail
  destined to both names from either internet or the uucp channel.

+ If you're directly on the Internet, consider adding a line of the form

internetname     internet-ca-gws(DEMAND)

  to your *private* data and see how that affects your mail routing
  paths.  This will cause a few bounces; some dimwitted mailers refuse
  to accept mail for their uucpname via SMTP over the internet or mail
  for their internet name via UUCP.

+ Please remember that your map costs will be used by sites all over
  the world to route mail to *your neighbours* (not to you!), so in
  some ways, your map entry should reflect how much mail you want to
  carry for your neighbours.  If you have expensive links, be careful
  with your map entry.

+ Conversely, remember that your neighbours costs will determine how
  mail is routed to you.  Ensure that your preferred link has at least
  a +HIGH on it.  Look at your neighbours maps, and their neighbours
  maps to at least get a picture of mail flow to you.

+ Examine your maillogs, and if you see a lot of traffic from your
  site to another distant site, consider dialing them direct, or
  dialing an intermediate site that won't mind.  Improving connectivity
  is the best way to improve mail routing; fiddling map entries is a
  merry-go-round that ends up with ridiculous routes.

+ If you have CPU and time to spare, try a "pathalias -l uunet",
  "pathalias -l some-neighbour" and "pathalias -l
  not-so-near-neighbour", to get a feel for how things look to the
  outside world.  Use only u.can.* if you want; it's a self-contained
  set.

+ When planning your map entries, note that there are a lot of people
  all over the world who seem to believe that they have a divine right
  to route *any* mail traffic through published map links; they seem
  unable to see the distinction between large files or news batches
  and personal mail.  In my opinion, they're being inconsiderate and
  reducing the usefulness of the UUCP network; however, I don't see
  how this problem can be avoided without active cooperation from most
  large UUCP sites.

	Mark.