Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!iuvax!mailrus!umix!honey
From: honey@umix.cc.umich.edu (Peter Honeyman)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: this might be getting out of hand...
Message-ID: <4381@umix.cc.umich.edu>
Date: 17 Aug 88 12:52:23 GMT
References: <3670@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: honey@citi.umich.edu (Peter Honeyman)
Organization: Center for Information Technology Integration, Univ of Michigan
Lines: 17
UUCP-Path: {uunet,rutgers}!umix!honey

rahul, you have a misconception about the domain name system.  it
provides name service, not mail forwarding service.

given an address u@a.b.c.d.e, the server for e is consulted to provide
the address of the name server for d.e, which is queried for the
address of the server for c.d.e, and so on.  eventually the name server
for a.b.c.d.e is discovered and queried for mail exchanger (mx) or
address info.  with that in hand, the originator connects to the host
specified, and delivers the message.

usually, all of this happens in the blink of an eye.

of course, it doesn't work like this in the uucp world, where
nonexistant domains are commonplace.  (e.g., i tried to send mail to
someone at chinet.chi.il.us -- oops, no such domain.)

	peter