Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!eric
From: eric@sunic.sunet.se (Eric Thomas SUNET)
Newsgroups: eunet.followup,comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Internet routing Europe -> USA -> Europe...
Message-ID: <2017@sunic.sunet.se>
Date: 31 Aug 90 17:52:43 GMT
References: <1990Aug30.091435.1982@ircam.ircam.fr> <867@iiasa.UUCP> <1990Aug31.162402.13659@ircam.ircam.fr>
Followup-To: eunet.followup
Organization: Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Lines: 21

I don't want to sound mean, but this isn't an EEC problem, this is a french
problem. France is basically 5 years behind most other "rich" european
countries in terms of networking. There is a serious lack of TCP/IP
connectivity as you have mentioned. There is also a serious lack of decent
gateways between UUCP, the internet, BITNET, etc. Just yesterday I received
a message from some french UUCP site, through a gateway at ENS Lyon. The
'Return-Path:' field contained just the login name of the poster on the UUCP
machine, and the 'From:' field contained some UUCP routing information and no
host name. Needless to say it was impossible to reply to this message, apart
from the fact that RFC822 mailers don't know what to do with UUCP routing the
syntax of the field was simply invalid. I complained, but I doubt anything will
happen, meanwhile french users "in the know" make use of the CERN gateway,
because "it works", and french politicians are happy that the particular site
they are in charge of is getting more influence and that they have managed to
get some prestigious position in RARE Working Group so-and-so, and who cares
about the rest? :-)

  Eric

PS: Sweden is not part of the EEC, and I am not precisely enthusiastic about
    the way the EEC spends its networking money, but that is another story...