Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!giza.cis.ohio-state.edu!karl From: karl@giza.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail Subject: Re: Re^2: Short-circuiting a route Message-ID: Date: 28 Jun 89 16:10:00 GMT References: <562@daitc.daitc.mil> <89Jun28.104844edt.10373@neat.ai.toronto.edu> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Organization: Ohio State Computer Science Lines: 27 In-reply-to: lamy@ai.utoronto.ca's message of 28 Jun 89 14:48:27 GMT My solution, while purely syntactic, is nonetheless correct for bona fide, registered domains. If there exists a `.' somewhere in a !-path, then that is an absolute address from that entity rightward. A problem with a dead MX forwarder not responding is, quite frankly, not my problem - if someone's MX is dead, s/he had better find a way to get a different MX fast or there will be surely hell to pay for far deeper and more important reasons than my particular preference to short-circuit !-paths to the rightmost domain. As for rewriting headers in a way palatable to the destination by a UUCP neighbor, that is not an acceptable reason for requiring respect of the !-path. If the entity is a valid domain, then anyone on the (physical, IP-based) Internet may send mail to user@domain.name (possibly via the MX, if the domain.name is not IP-connected) and expect that The Right Thing will happen - such special cases cannot be enforced by anyone, and I see no reason to try. My preferred transport is "Internet via domain-based addressing" (modulo the special cases of our immediate UUCP neighbors, in which case it becomes "UUCP via domain-based addressing"), and if mail is going to pass through my machines, then it's going to be treated in like manner. I am a Domain Absolutist, for which I do not apologize. The critical point of my short-circuit is nothing more than the observation of both `.' and `!' in a !-path. --Karl