Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!wivax!ucadmus!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!tgr!ron@BRL-TGR From: ron%BRL-TGR@tgr.UUCP Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Subject: Re: BIG networks Message-ID: <6604@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Mon, 17-Dec-84 09:08:58 EST Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.6604 Posted: Mon Dec 17 09:08:58 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 20-Dec-84 01:56:09 EST Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA Organization: Ballistic Research Lab Lines: 11 Sorry, there is nothing inate to ARPA mail that keeps you from getting "no such user" or "this site is down" messages. The specification only deals with two machines talking to each other once the connection is made. Most systems will tell you that a user doesn't exist during the SMTP dialog. It is everyones implementation that deals with when retries are done and what the nature of the error message returned is. On our system, you can either send your letter into the mail queues and blindly assume it will either get there, or you'll get notified eventually, or you can sit there and watch it try to be delivered to the remote machine immediately. -Ron