Xref: utzoo comp.mail.uucp:1605 comp.mail.headers:385
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!mailrus!ncar!husc6!bu-cs!jsol
From: jsol@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jon Solomon)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: Real data to support my claim that '-d sun' is the way to go.
Message-ID: <24387@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 11 Aug 88 19:43:53 GMT
References: <3703@palo-alto.DEC.COM> <10139@g.ms.uky.edu> <3721@palo-alto.DEC.COM> <10141@g.ms.uky.edu> <63372@sun.uucp> <10145@g.ms.uky.edu>
Reply-To: jsol@buita.bu.edu (Jon Solomon)
Followup-To: comp.mail.uucp
Organization: Boston Univ.
Lines: 64


I just want to put my two cents worth into this discussion. In the current
internet (little "i" internet means everybody, Capital "I" Internet means
DARPA blessed sites), we cannot reasonably satisfy everyone's complaints
about mail header munging.

About the only thing that is agreed upon is that some mailers have to
rewrite headers or they get into some form of trouble. The most responsible
thing you can do is to minimize the trouble.

A user of mine got a message from a site: texfoo.crl (I'm paraphrasing, I don't
remember the exact site). Clearly the people on this site prefer to hide the
domain system from their users, but they neglect to add the appropriate 
finishing touches (.com, tektronix.com or whatever is right -- I don't know,
all I could do is give my user a guess at what I thought it was).

Like Bill Nowicki, my site sends out alot of mail every day. Most of
it goes to either Internet (large I Internet) or BITNET sites. We have
rewriting rules which make this task easy. Also, no header rewriting needs
to be done.

We have sites on campus which use uucp, but they conform to the domain system
addressing scheme and that makes our rewriting lives easier (we don't have to
in their case).

As more and more uucp sites come up, and their interdependencies with Internet
sites increases, the need for a common naming scheme will be ever-increasing.

BUT UNLESS WE ACTUALLY MAKE A CERTAIN NAMING SCHEME LAW WITH ITS APPROPRIATE
PROTECTIONS, we have no way of truly enforcing the rules.

SO, sendmail rewriters do the best they can. 

Without legal precidence for naming schemes, we will not be able to
fully police the network. Flaming and peer pressure do help, but they
are not the complete answer. Only laws and lawyers will really help
this sort of thing.

Personally, I think Sun is doing a great job forwarding mail. They
seem to look at the world from the view that I share, which is that
the Internet is the center of the world, and uucp has to eventually
conform or be ousted.

Think of what chaos there would be if the Internet adopted
"bang-style" routing (that is ucbvax.berkeley.edu!bu-it.bu.edu!jsol).
The Internet tries to make routing work through the use of domains,
and not through the use of address munging. I think the powers that
be on the Internet consider header munging a bad idea (I agree).

On the other hand, the uucp sites would cry murder if we failed to
add "buita!" before the headers we pass to them. They already face
a number of problems with address resolution because they aren't
a connected-all-the-time network.

There is also some rule that says we can't tell others how to do their
own internal routing and name resolution. We just have to be sure that
they follow the protocol.

Which brings up a point, is there an rfc covering how routing should be
done in the UUCP world? If not then I think there should be. Flaming at
Sun without an RFC to point at is like flaming at the devil. It just
won't help.

--jsol