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From: news%wolves@cs.duke.edu (News Administrator @ Wolves)
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin,comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: Possible mail problems with  "CFV:  talk.politics.aids"
Message-ID: <1991Mar11.010105.20585@wolves.uucp>
Date: 11 Mar 91 01:01:05 GMT
References: <}#9-MV%@rpi.edu> <1991Mar10.105015.1543@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
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(To quote Arte Johnson ---  vvvveeeeerrrrrrryyyyyyy  interesting!)

First, there are some bounces being seen here at wolves where the mail
is being misdirected through here toward duke!tpa-vote.  All seem to
involve gatech in some manner.  Mail that makes it to mcnc or duke other
than via gatech is being delivered and dealt with correctly.
-----

That said, what follows are some thoughts on my examination of the
headers that Kent provided and the mail.log here at wolves.
---

It sure looks to me as if gatech has done some reorganizing internally
and has the mailers abusing mixed mode addresses again.

I have seen some very mangled headers to and from this site and most
seem to have been manipulated by gatech.  Occasionally, I have seen mcnc
behave a little wierd, but Kent's example sure points a hard finger at
gatech.  I've never heard of a site makeing a real distinction between
its domain name and its uucp name, but there it is, gatech.edu and
gatech.UUCP with seperate headers!

It is also possible that the problem lies with ames.  The other piece of
mail that was misdirected to duke for a user at this site also came
through ames.  There are, however some mangled mailings (apparantly)
from gatech that did not go thru ames.

At the same time as Kent's bounce, another piece of mail via gatech got
similarly mangled.

Wolves is not an aggressive re-router and could not recognize that 
"duke!tpa-vote" was really bound for wolves.  

I suspect that there are some sites that have a few problems in the map
data and are not handling the "%-hack" as documented.  Though passing
the % to a uucp mailer may guarantee no particular result.

There is a transform:
	tpa-vote%wolves@cs.duke.edu
to 
	cs.duke.edu!tpa-vote@wolves

that is troublesome.  That transform, while technically "right" in some
sense is not guaranteed to work since the result is a mixed mode address
that has no "right" interpretation.  Different systems can (and do)
interpret the mixed ! and @ addresses in opposite orders.

	Whoever produced the address expected one behaviour, and
gatech.UUCP in resolving the address for gatech.edu did it the other
way.  There is no way to say who is correct.

	You might look in your record of outgoing mail for Dec 19 and
see what address you sent mail to site wolves via on that date.
-- 
Usenet Net News Administrator @ The Wolves Den
news%wolves@cs.duke.edu    news%wolves@mcnc.org    ...duke!wolves!news
There is a real person who watches this account as their assigned task!