Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: "Fred E.J. Linton" Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: The Use and Abuse of UUNET (Was: ATTMAIL Access?) Message-ID: <1809@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 4 Dec 89 20:04:34 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 89 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 552, message 1 of 7 In article , psrc@pegasus.att.com (Paul S. R. Chisholm) writes: > ... recitation-of-the-month: AT&T Mail is a commercial e-mail service. > There is *no* gateway between the AT&T Mail service and the Internet. > This seems to be quite correct -- except -- that most of the well- connected Unix systems "registered" with AT&T Mail seem willing to overlook another AT&T Mail subscriber's _occasionally_ sending through them FROM his own AT&T Mail account TO an Internet/Bitnet/Usenet/etc.-net destination. Not so, however, for mail ORIGINATING somewhere else and destined for you on your AT&T Mail account (except in flukey cases, where the postmaster isn't aware of how his machine is getting mugged, or doesn't know how to stop it): > It's not a technical problem (AT&T Mail talks uucp, and so > do several gateways), but a billing question. Any system that acted > as a gateway would be billed by AT&T Mail for all messages it passed > on, and of course wouldn't have reliable way of passing the bills along > along to the systems it served; as a result, no one wants to be a gateway. Indeed, I once found (briefly) a seeming Internet-to-attmail gateway -- very soon I had "cease-and desist" mail from its postmaster, with whom (since I hadn't cost him more than 85 cents, in fact) I quickly was able to make peace; shortly thereafter, he had a patch on his mailer rejecting third-party attmail-bound traffic through his machine. Many sites spring to mind -- cbosgd and athq03, among others -- who are no longer even on attmail because of the expense of forwarding in this way, or who -- like uunet, seismo, ihnp4 -- just blankly refuse to forward into attmail except for their own local users. > Yes, it would be nice if there was a gateway. Yes, there are gateways > to MCI Mail and CompuServe. I know it. AT&T Mail management knows > it. As of right now, there isn't one. Gentle pressure on the AT&T Mail Customer Assistance Center reps at +1 800 624 5672 may, in time, cause AT&T Mail management to realize that permitting inbound mail at no charge to the site last handling it before it arrives in attmail can only be _good_ for business -- a fact MCI Mail and C'Serve have already realized (and _that_ fact may help convince AT&T Mail!). > ... get from the Internet to AT&T Mail? You can't, okay? You can however make yourself a little switch box that will connect in "triangle-routing" fashion your keyboard to your mainframe's data-in line, your mainframe's data-out line (normally to your CRT) to a modem TxD line, and the modem's RxD line to your CRT, and in this way, on the line with AT&T Mail, you can transfer to your AT&T Mail account, for further processing, anything that reached you from Internet; similarly, by reversing the triangle, you can download from your attmail account and into your mainframe account and thence onwards into the Internet whatever has arrived there. (I made myself such a box using a couple of 4P2T switches -- totally hassle-free.) As to how the Moderator finds his way into AT&T Mail accounts, I'd be curious to know -- perhaps the attmail recipients have an agreement with the gatewaying machine to reimburse expenses, or the gatewaying machines haven't yet realized they're being taken advantage of, or... > [Moderator's Note: Sorry, but I have to differ with you > on the 'no gateway to attmail' statement. TELECOM Digest is sent to > a few people who recieve it in their attmail boxes at their request. > I send control copies of the Digest to my own attmail box from time > to time to test the link. ... or maybe they'll just up and plug the leak, with no warning, and no bounce report... (-: ? Fred E.J. Linton Wesleyan U. Math. Dept. 649 Sci. Tower Middletown, CT 06457 ARPA/Internet: FLINTON@eagle.Wesleyan.EDU (preferred) Bitnet: FLINTON%eagle@WESLEYAN[.bitnet] (also works) from uucp: ...!{research, mtune!arpa, uunet}!eagle.Wesleyan.EDU!FLinton on ATT-Mail: !fejlinton ( ...!attmail!fejlinton ) Tel.: + 1 203 776 2210 (home) OR + 1 203 347 9411 x2249 (work) Telex: + 15 122 3413 FEJLINTON CompuServe ID: 72037,1054 ( OR, maybe: 72037.1054@CompuServe.COM ) F-Net (guest): linton@inria.inria.fr OR ...!inria.inria.fr!linton [Moderator's Note: Well, if that occurs, then those users will need to supply me with some other address. It would be a shame. PT]