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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!jordan
From: jordan@ucbvax.ARPA (Jordan Hayes)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: Mail routing -- problems showing up
Message-ID: <9541@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 1-Aug-85 13:17:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.9541
Posted: Thu Aug  1 13:17:38 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Aug-85 04:08:28 EDT
References: <360@im4u.UUCP>
Reply-To: jordan@ucbvax.UUCP (Jordan Hayes)
Distribution: net
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 31


John -- wonderfully put, but there's more to be said...

>In the current state of the world, you need source routing to get
>*between* networks, e.g., user%host.CSNET@csnet-relay.ARPA.

Well, not really. Here I can do user@host.CSNET and our sendmail
takes care of where to resolve it to (namely the csnet-relay, but
it could be anywhere -- how many times have you seen people put
the WRONG relay in their return address... I've seen many who
say user%host.csnet@rand-relay or user%host.bitnet@BERKELEY...).

These are decisions that are best made by administrators, not users.

>But the % is a temporary kludge, one hopes, and the !s could go away,
>leaving user@DOM1.DOM2.DOM.  That still includes two separators, it's
>true, and user.DOM1.DOM2.DOM might have been better.  However,
>it supplies absolute addressing, which UUCP syntax cannot.

Well, the local part is separate from the domain part for a good reason,
namely, other applications...

>Why should the defects of UUCP be foisted on the rest of the world,
>which has gotten along quite well without them for many years?

GOOD QUESTION. There has not been one good reason given.

------------
Jordan Hayes        jordan@UCB-VAX.BERKELEY.EDU
UC Berkeley                       ucbvax!jordan
+1 (415) 835-8767    37' 52.29" N 122' 15.41" W