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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!decwrl!amd70!dual!fair
From: fair@dual.UUCP (Erik E. Fair)
Newsgroups: net.flame,net.mail,net.news
Subject: Re: Fantastic Elastic Plastic USENET addresses
Message-ID: <138@dual.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 2-Nov-83 21:52:12 EST
Article-I.D.: dual.138
Posted: Wed Nov  2 21:52:12 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 6-Nov-83 09:08:15 EST
References: <482@cbosgd.UUCP>
Organization: Dual Systems, Berkeley, CA
Lines: 32

Mark,
	Not many mailers will handle INTERNET format addresses. There are two
of which I am aware:

	1) Berkeley sendmail
	2) hacked nmail

Sendmail has one fundamental limitation: the INTERNET format only works
for those sites that the local host talks to directly. So, for example,
if I wanted to reply to something that someone at gatech wrote, I would
have to generate the path myself, since dual does not talk directly to
`gatech'.

Nmail is an interesting solution, a look up table. However, as Gene
Spafford pointed out, there is no measure of connection reliability.
This is one of the problems I will have to contend with in the database
that I keep, but for now, I'm having a fun time just trying to collect
the information at all.

The format that the vast majority of sites are choosing is !INTERNET,
and so we get letters bouncing all over here and begone. As an aside,
is anyone working on making better USENET connections overall? I got a
reply to this article from `mcvax' in Amsterdam, and he sent me (along
with some comments), the path that the article took to get to `mcvax'.
The article bounced across the continental U.S. THREE TIMES before
making the leap across the Atlantic. The interesting point is that
`mcvax' is not more than 4 news hops away from dual.

	more fuel for the fire,

	Erik E. Fair	{ucbvax,amd70,zehntel,unisoft}!dual!fair
			Dual Systems Corporation, Berkeley, California