Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!mp.cs.niu.edu!rickert From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail Subject: Re: MAXHOPS Message-ID: <1990Nov8.230931.15216@mp.cs.niu.edu> Date: 8 Nov 90 23:09:31 GMT References: <10811@milton.u.washington.edu> Organization: Northern Illinois University Lines: 25 In article <10811@milton.u.washington.edu> hubert@cac.washington.edu (Steve Hubert) writes: >We've actually had a couple recent cases of "legitimate" addresses that >went through more than 17 hops and were returned. They were legitimate >in the sense that they would have eventually reached the address if the >value of MAXHOPS had been higher. These were a combination of mailing >lists in mailing lists and forwards and so on. I'm not worried about cases >like this failing now and then, but it did make me think that maybe it is >time to raise the value of MAXHOPS in the next version of sendmail so that >this is fixed before it becomes a real problem. I find this suggestion quite confusing. The growth of the Internet, and the growing number of hosts with MX addresses who are only 1 or 2 hops of the network would seem to imply that the typical number of hops is decreasing, not increasing. Supporting this interpretation is the encouragement in RFC1123 do avoid source-routing, and mail direct. I suspect this is mostly a problem of mailing lists which are being expanded too many times, and perhaps should be taken as an indication that the mailing list needs some reorganization. -- =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science Northern Illinois Univ. DeKalb, IL 60115. +1-815-753-6940