Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!rochester!pt!andrew.cmu.edu!aad+ From: aad+@andrew.cmu.edu (Anthony A. Datri) Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc Subject: Re: Why @? (was NO NO NO NO NO, sort of) Message-ID:Date: Sat, 11-Jul-87 11:37:23 EDT Article-I.D.: andrew.MUxZimy00WAByBk08s Posted: Sat Jul 11 11:37:23 1987 Date-Received: Mon, 13-Jul-87 01:20:34 EDT Organization: Carnegie Mellon University Lines: 17 In-Reply-To: <599@nonvon.UUCP> These Nazi's are the us government, sort of. Part of SRI, the NIC people sort of administer the Arpanet. Among other things, they put out all those RFC's that everyone's been arguing about. There are some machines, like the God-like seismo, that can figure out just about any semi-reasonable way you have of addressing something. For instance, if you wanted to send me mail on my favorite PDP-10 over the arpanet, you'd send to ad0r@tb.cc.cmu.edu. However, some uucp sites don't understand that, but they can use seismo!tb.cc.cmu.edu!ad0r and have it work just fine. To look at that address, you'd think that tb was a uucp machine, when in fact this isn't really a terribly official path, but seismo gets the idea. The problem is that in the past the major networks were stayed pretty much away from each other. Now, as we get more and more machines, and more and more machines on more than one net, people are faced with the problem of making their software compatible with everyone elses.