Can something be done about this in the link weights file? The link to Chile is not up 24 hours a day and so should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. Thanks. Roger > Received: from JHUVM(MAILER@JHUVM) by NIHCU (Mailer) id 1952 > Tue, 16 Aug 88 11:44:42 EDT > Received: by JHUVM (Mailer X1.25) id 8455; Tue, 16 Aug 88 11:44:04 EDT > Date: Tue, 16 Aug 1988 11:39:30 EDT > From: Jim Jones <L64A0110@JHUVM> > Subject: Re: mail delivery error > To: "Mark F. Haven" <MHQ@NIHCU> > In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 15 Aug 88 09:20:09 EDT > > > >From: "Mark F. Haven" <MHQ@NIHCU> > >Date: Mon, 15 Aug 88 09:14:21 EDT > >Subject: Chile is rather distant. > > > >This morning I sent a message to your LISTSERV of > >INFO GENINFO. I received an automated reply that the file > >LISTSERVMEMO was being sent to me - so far so good. Following > >this I got 3 lines of a message requesting that I send further > >requests to my nearest listserv host - problem was that it > >referred me to my nearest listserv host as being: > > LISTSERV@UCHCECVM As best I can tell that location is > >the Universidad de Chile Centro de Computacion! (I suspect > >there is a closer one (;-).) Just thought you might like to > >know of the message generated from your site (FYI NIHCU is > >near Washington, D.C.). > > It's odd how these things work sometimes, but to tell you the truth, > your site may very well be closer to UCHCECVM than JHUVM in some > sense. Let me explain; a file sent from NIHCU to UCHCECVM passes > through the following machines: NIHCU--UMDD--UCHCECVM whereas a > file sent from NIHCU to JHUVM takes the following, longer route of: > NIHCU--UMDD--UMDB--GWUVM--PSUVMXA--JHUVM > > So, even though geographically your much closer to Baltimore than Chile, > the Chilean node is closer when network links are the deciding factor. > It's not as simple as counting the number of links, each link is given > a "weighted" value and these values are summed. If you have troubles > using the UCHCECVM node (for example if the node is unreachable much of > the time) please let me know and I'll try to find out how your node can > be allowed to use a LISTSERV in the US. > > It's not that unusual for mail to travel odd paths (geographically that > is) between two machines. Since there is no centralized control of > network configuration (anyone can choose to connect to BITNET via any > other consenting node), BITNET has grown very odd topologically. For > example, to get from JHU to UMBC2 (which are both in the Baltimore area) > the route is: JHUVM--PSUVMXA--GWUVM--UMDD--UMDB--UMBC2 > > -jj