Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!jhc From: jhc@att.ATT.COM (Jonathan Hawbrook-Clark) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: problems with att multiple-machine approach? Message-ID: <2300@att.ATT.COM> Date: 25 Sep 88 02:07:34 GMT References: <1988Sep23.105347.652@lsuc.uucp> Reply-To: jhc@att.ATT.COM (Jonathan Hawbrook-Clark) Organization: AT&T ISL Middletown NJ USA Lines: 42 In article <1988Sep23.105347.652@lsuc.uucp> dave@lsuc.uucp (David Sherman) writes: >My understanding of the "att" multi-machine setup is that >each of the three machines (Ohio, New Jersey and Illinois) >calls itself "att", and whoever happens to call you first >will pick up any mail addressed to/through "att". Fine. Right so far. >Now, what happens if your dialin isn't working for a few >days, but your dialout is fine? OK, you think. You poll >all the sites that you talk to, so anything pending will >go through. But what happens if you normally call the Ohio >"att" for your mail, but there's a ton of mail waiting for >you on the New Jersey "att"? Will it ever reach you? >Should you have to call all three "att" machines if your >dialin is often busy or down? >The three don't share the same /usr/spool, do they? No, they don't. And your underlying point is correct, any mail queued up for you will never get delivered. But not because of the scenario you suggest, although that is currently the case, but simply because we do not trust that a machine calling in is actually who it says it is. It is a trivial command to change a machine's nodename, and I suspect that no-one would thank us if we delivered mail for 'lsuc' to some schoolkid with a PC who happened to rename hir machine to that and call us up. So, except in rare cases, we only deliver mail when we make the call. This does pose a minor problem with our netnews feeds; we are moving towards a setup where mail received on, say, att-mt, for a site which has a netnews feed from att-ih will magically get forwarded to the appropriate att for delivery. This is primarily for cost reasons. Hope this clears up some questions. This situation isn't perfect, but we are putting security above convenience and cost. If anyone has any truly wonderful ideas which would satisfy the various criteria under which we work then we'd love to hear them. -- Jonathan Clark jonathan@mtune.att.com, attmail!jonathan Any affiliation is given for identification purposes only. The Englishman never enjoys himself except for some noble purpose.