Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!sat!lmb
From: lmb@sat.com (Larry Blair)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: BITFTP grief! (UUNET email-ftp?)
Message-ID: <1991May23.012530.3329@sat.com>
Date: 23 May 91 01:25:30 GMT
References: <81678@bu.edu> <4068@island.COM> <1991May22.081251.1026@uunet.uu.net>
Distribution: na
Organization: SAT Corp., Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 31

In article <1991May22.081251.1026@uunet.uu.net> asp@uunet.uu.net (Andrew Partan) writes:
=In article <4068@island.COM>, daniel@island.COM (Daniel Smith "innovation, not litigation...") writes:
=> > They can send mail to ftp-requesdt@uunet.uu.net and request the files
=> > be transfered for them. Why uunet doesn't provide a service like BITFTP
=> > for DIRECTLY connected customers is beyond me.
=> 	I wholeheartily second this!  I've used ftp-request on occasion,
=> but the turnaround time isn't as good as what would be possible if uunet
=> were to run the type of software that Princeton is using.
=
=If someone can write some software that can distinguish between
=	customer!customer-node!user
=and
=	customer!non-customer-node!user
=for all customers w/o us having to keep a database of interior customer
=nodes, then we will consider running it.

This is obviously not going to be possible, since you have no idea what
constitutes a `customer-node'.  Why not just restrict the service to
`customer!user' or `user@*customer'?  Anyone wanting to use this service would
have to figure out how to set up a /usr/lib/alias file, but so what?  A
service like this would make me want to retain my uunet account (which we are
about to drop).  Even better, uucp the file rather than mail it.  That would
be much more efficient and would avoid having to worry about whether the
requester was a customer or not.

=Until that point, we would rather use one of our operators to do the
=ftping of files.

Does this imply that I can request uunet to ftp something for me?
-- 
Larry Blair   lmb@sat.com   {apple,decwrl}!sat!lmb