If they buy transit, or do not buy transit from UUNet makes no difference. You don't see a problem with pointing default at UUNet or any other provider? This trace was to a network that did not exist, so it should not have been sent to UUNet.
You are correct. I do not see a problem with people who buy transit pointing default at those whom they buy transit from. We sell transit, and I'm happy for customers to do this. There are several reasonably good reasons, such as (a) they don't want to carry full routing everywhere, and (b) in the event that tehy run route dampening or similar and for some reason my route table splurges as does that of their other transit provider (but in a manner where their announcements to me remain static), they can still reach the world to some extent automatically, without frantically having to go around clearing dampening. Given that the first default free router on the way will just return !H, and it's on bandwidth the customer is paying for, I'm not sure what the problem is here. Alex Bligh Xara Networks