Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!ukma!david
From: david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: active rerouting
Message-ID: <10262@s.ms.uky.edu>
Date: 18 Sep 88 21:51:19 GMT
References: <4740@b-tech.UUCP> <4747@b-tech.UUCP> <4748@b-tech.UUCP> <6581@chinet.UUCP> <2105@edsews.EDS.COM> <915@psuhcx.psu.edu>
Reply-To: david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae)
Organization: U of Kentucky, Mathematical Sciences
Lines: 44



In article <915@psuhcx.psu.edu> wcf@psuhcx (Bill Fenner) writes:
>In article <2105@edsews.EDS.COM> roberts@edsews.EDS.COM (Ted Roberts) writes:
>|In article <6581@chinet.UUCP>, les@chinet.UUCP (Leslie Mikesell) writes:
>|> Suppose >|> you want siteC to route  siteA!siteB!siteC!domain.dom!user or
>|> siteA!siteB!siteC!user@domain.dom.
>|These are not the same thing.  The first route would send to siteA, then
>|siteB, then siteC and siteC would route to user@domain.dom which they
>|would know how to do since they know how to resolve domain addresses
>|(you hope:-).  The second would attempt to send to domain.dom, then to
>|siteA, then to siteB, then to site C, then to user.  This is because the
>|"@" syntax takes precedence over the "!" syntax.
>Who says?  I don't think any of the RFC's mention ! syntax at all.  

Ever hear of RFC-976?  It talks about how the UUCP network works and
a couple of ways of inter-operating with the Internet.  It's all FULL
of !'s.


>If your >site is a smart site, running sendmail or smail, then @ will usually have
>precedence over !.  but UUCP-only sites only understand !'s, and only look
>for !'s.  To answer Leslie's question in the first place - inews will change
>siteA!siteB!siteC!user@domain.dom to ..siteC!domain.dom!user, to get around
>this exact problem... it changes the address to all !'s, if it needs to.

You're partly right.  I think there are sites out there which are sensitive
to the route the mail came through.  Such a site would give precedence to
! on mail coming over a UUCP link and to @ on mail coming over other sorts
of links.  Personally I don't understand why they would want to make it
different like that, but the RFC doesn't specify a precedence.  Instead
the RFC says to avoid the issue altogether by using either pure user@domain
forms or host!host!domain!user forms, and not to mix.






-- 
<---- David Herron -- One of the MMDF guys                   
<---- ska: David le casse\*'      {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET
<---- 				What does the phrase "Don't work too hard" 
<---- have to do with the decline of the american 'work ethic'?