Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!evax!texas!ylee
From: ylee@csl.dl.nec.com (Ying-Da Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Re: Sendmail host canonicalization broken?
Message-ID: <1991Apr16.031531.15364@csl.dl.nec.com>
Date: 16 Apr 91 03:15:31 GMT
References: <1991Apr14.002726.9334@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1991Apr15.200923.11004@csl.dl.nec.com> <1991Apr15.222245.6789@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Organization: NEC America, C & C Software Development Lab
Lines: 34

Yup, I got carried away in my conclusion when I said

 This way, people in mcc.com can send mail to France with
 user@eiffel.fr. (with period) and to its own French department with
 user@eiffel.fr (without period).

Neil is absolutely right in saying

  The reliable approach is to NEVER allow addresses such as 'eiffel.fr'
  to be locally qualified.

On the other hand, the main point of argument in my message, namely,

 Furthermore, RFC 1123 ...
 does not automatically comes into play here.
 ...
 there is no reason why the mailer couldn't resolve
 an input of 'user@eiffel.fr.' into host 'eiffel.fr.' (with
 ending period) and recipient 'user@eiffel.fr' (without ending
 period).

still holds, and that address eiffel.fr. specified by the user
should not be rejected.  It is the same point that pallas@eng.sun.com
(Joseph Pallas) made in his posting.   The 'Principle of Least
Astonishment' that Paul Pomes brought up would, in fact, demand this
treatment: In almost all other interactions with DNS on practically all
implementations, eiffel.fr. is THE sure way to get you to France without
any surprises.

	Ying-Da Lee			(214)518-3490
	C&C Software Development Lab
	NEC America			(214)518-3990 (FAX)
	ylee@csl.dl.nec.com
	uunet!necbsd!ylee