Text 1496, 66 rader
Skriven 2006-05-29 14:38:00 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
   Kommentar till text 1494 av Peter Knapper (3:772/1.0)
Ärende: Situation on R2:50
==========================
Hello Peter.

29 May 06 22:32, you wrote to me:

 MvdV>> P4 was written with little or no concern for the situation outside
 MvdV>> Z1 period. For one it tacitly assumes local calls are free.

 PK> Nope, nowhere does P4 say anything like that at all, that is simply
 PK> YOUR interpretation.

It is not my interpretation, it is my conclusion.

P4 is full of coast issues. There are penalties for unduly incurring coast on
others, there are provisions for nodes routing extraordinary amounts of mail,
etc, etc.

The NC has an obligation to see that mail delivered at the host gets to the
nodes in the net. What is does *not* say is how it gets from the host to the
leaf nodes. In particular it does not say who bears the *cost*.  A glaring
omission I say.

The only explanation I can come up with is that the writers of P4 wrote it from
the position that there *is* no cost. Which was true for most if not all of the
US and Canada at the time of writing of P4.

 PK> In addition, in many nets "local" was a cost call the same as in your
 PK> part of the world.

There may have been exceptions even in Z1 at the time of writing of P4. If that
was the case, the writers of P4 were not aware of it or they choose to ignore
it.

 MvdV>> So it does not matter who calls who when it comes to the
 MvdV>> host's obligation of delivering incoming routed mail.

 PK> Nope, there is no such obligation. A Host must agree to ROUTE INBOUND
 PK> mail, but is not obliged to deliver it.

The intention obviously is to get the mail to its final destination and in
order to do that *someone* has to make a call. The glaring ommission of not
saying *who* has to make the call is the telltale evidence for the tacit
assumption of free local calls.

 MvdV>> In Z2 local calls are *not* free and so it does matter who calls
 MvdV>> who.

 PK> And in many situations the same applies to other parts of the world,
 PK> so don't worry, you are not alone......;-)

We have adapted but not without some problems. Obviously it is unreasonable to
demand that the host makes all the calls to deliver the mail. That would put
*all* of the coast on one person. So we went by the rule: the leaf nodes have
to call their host or hub at regular intervals to pick up mail. Prefereably
every day, but once a week at minimum.

There *have* been a few cases here in The Netherlands were sysops refused to
comply. Nodes *have* been removed from the nodelist for not picking up mail for
an extended period of time. (A couple of month).

Of course that is history. The few remaining POTS only nodes poll at regular
intervals and for IP it does not matter as the calls *are* free.

Michiel

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