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From: asjl@tinakori.comp.vuw.ac.nz (Andy Linton)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Re: How serious is the at->@ problem?
Message-ID: <1989Nov23.001545.750@kaukau.comp.vuw.ac.nz>
Date: 23 Nov 89 00:15:45 GMT
References: <3747@ccnysci.UUCP> <7867@ditmela.oz> <10116@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu>
Sender: news@kaukau.comp.vuw.ac.nz (News Admin)
Reply-To: Andy.Linton@comp.vuw.ac.nz
Organization: Computer Science Dept, Victoria University, Wellington, NEW ZEALAND
Lines: 24

:There's an 'at.man.ac.uk' at an astronomy department in Manchster,
:which triggered my awareness of the problem.

These people are really asking for trouble. In the UK, the powers that
be for reasons unfathomable to me decided that host addresses should be
written back to front WRT the rest of the world e.g. my address in UK
format is: 

	Andy.Linton@nz.ac.vuw.comp

Sendmail and other mailers used in the UK have large chunks of their
config files taken up with changing RFC822 domain based names into the
UK "Grey Book" order and vice versa. You can see what's going to happen
with the Manchester address. If the MTA decides it's in "Grey Book"
format it should go to Austria but if the MTA decides it's RFC822 then
reverse the order and send to a UK host. But wait a minute this could be
a message for Austria written in RFC822 order etc etc.

I know the JNT won't get their act together now on the naming scheme in
the UK as they are committed to X.400 but the guys at manchester could
do themselves a favour in two ways by changing their machine name.
--
SENDER = Andy Linton
EMAIL  = Andy.Linton@comp.vuw.ac.nz	PHONE = +64 4 721 000 x8978