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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!columbia!topaz!hedrick
From: hedrick@topaz.ARPA (Chuck Hedrick)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: Mail routing -- problems showing up
Message-ID: <2875@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 23-Jul-85 16:12:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.2875
Posted: Tue Jul 23 16:12:17 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Jul-85 06:34:15 EDT
References: <3018@nsc.UUCP>
Reply-To: hedrick@topaz.UUCP (Chuck Hedrick)
Distribution: net
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 17

I'm not convinced that looking for the Arpa domain is going to solve
your problem.  There is the small problem that .ARPA is being phased
out, to be replaced by .EDU, .COM, etc.  But more generally, I am not
convinced that it is right to have artificially-intelligent parsers
that decide what foo!bar@baz means based on the semantics of the
addresses.  Can't we just agree on some other character that has the
same meaning as @ (i.e. internet host), but with the same order as !.
Suppose we choose $.  Then foo!bar@baz would become baz$foo!bar or
foo!baz$bar, depending upon what was meant.  All of the UUCP/Internet
gateways should be running software powerful enough to convert between
this format to an RFC 821 format.  I'd much rather have an unambiguous
syntax to fix this thing once and for all, rather than get hairier
and hairier special case handling.  Indeed our gateway software is
prepared to accept ! format when referring to Internet hosts.  So mail
can be addressed topaz!blue!user rather than topaz!user@blue.  How
common is this?  If it is common enough, then we can just tell people
not to use @ in UUCP addresses, and forget this whole problem.