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From: raymond@uvm.edu (Tim Raymond)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Question about proper return address
Message-ID: <1991Jun20.155833.13190@uvm.edu>
Date: 20 Jun 91 15:58:33 GMT
Sender: news@uvm.edu
Distribution: usa
Organization: Univ. of Vermont, Eng., Math., and Bus. Admin. (EMBA) Computer Facility
Lines: 44

I have some questions regarding the proper return address for hosts
connected to the Internet that are known by DNS.

In the README for cf files in sendmail.5.65b (sendmail/cf/README), there
is an explanation for the necessity of both the tcpld and tcp mailers.
The following is an excerpt from that file:

> As regards tcp and tcpld: in theory, there should be only one mailer
> here, called "smtp", that deals with addresses in the form 
> "user@host.domain".
> Everyone on the Internet would use this, regardless of what domain
> they were in.  Host name lookups would be performed via the domain naming
> system (DNS), and no central registry of machine names would be necessary.
>
> Unfortunately, this is not the case.  The MILNET community is still
> in transition towards the DNS, and until this transition is complete,
> they do not have to use the nameserver.  Rather, they can "legally"
> still use the host table supplied by SRI-NIC to translate names to
> addresses.  This means that to be strictly legal, we must send out
> messages in the form "user@host.domain" ONLY FOR machines that are
> registered with SRI NIC.  Machines that are not registered with the
> NIC must be "hidden" behind a relay machine, e.g.,
> user%unregistered_host@registered_host.domain.  This, when MILNET folks
> reply to this, the mail passes through "registered_host.domain" first.
>
> Currently this "hiding" behind NIC registered hosts is performed by
> the "tcp" mailer.

My questions are these:
  Is this still necessary?  
  If yes:
	How does a host get entered into the SRI-NIC host table?
	Is a host that ns.nic.ddn.mil knows about as an authoritative
	 nameserver for our domain automatically in there?


Thanks in advance.

Tim Raymond
Postmaster 
Tim.Raymond@uvm.edu
uunet!uvm-gen!raymond
--
Tim