Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!ames!sgi!vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com
From: vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com (Vernon Schryver)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: MX-registration vs %-hack (was Re: New Host-Requirement RFCs)
Summary: "%" considered effective
Message-ID: <43522@sgi.sgi.com>
Date: 25 Oct 89 17:32:03 GMT
References: <8910201839.AA29376@arcturus.mitre.org> <7696@ditmela.oz>
Sender: vjs@rhyolite.wpd.sgi.com
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 24


There was a time when I sneered at the %-laden From: lines from
berkeley.edu and other places.  That time has passed.  Sgi.sgi.com now
rewrites From:'s for internally originated mail to something of the form
user%host.dom.sgi.com@sgi.sgi.com.  (Of course, stuff passing thru is not
touched.)

This happened when people exhausted my tolerance to complaints that replies
to our mail did not work.  It took hundreds of such complaints before I
yielded.

Our problem was made worse by many of things, including my mistakes, broken
DNS-servers out there, having thousands of hosts in several domains behind
the sgi.sgi.com gateway, not wanting to burden our secondary servers with
our not too small and ever changing host files, and the security worries of
some people.

We tried using simple wildcard MX records.  That does not work.  The
obnoxious "%" does work.


Vernon Schryver
Silicon Graphics
vjs@sgi.com