Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version VT1.00C 11/1/84; site vortex.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!bellcore!vortex!lauren
From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: more on domains
Message-ID: <844@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 20-Oct-85 20:47:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: vortex.844
Posted: Sun Oct 20 20:47:42 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 22-Oct-85 07:12:04 EDT
References: <1748@akgua.UUCP>
Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles
Lines: 33

(First, an aside.  Is it my imagination, or has SOMEONE out there suddenly
dumped a lot of old netnews msgs back onto the net?  I've recently gotten
messages from people replying to articles of mine that were posted
well over a month ago or more!)

---

Well, I never intended my philosophy of "don't break existing
mailers" to be codified as "Lauren's Law" (give me a break!) but
if this concept were generally followed I suspect our network life would
be somewhat easier.  My concept is that there's nothing really wrong
with sending fancy stuff down the line to another site (even, horrors,
an address with an '@' in it) so long as you have sufficient information
about the "state of the universe" to know how that address will be
handled at various points along the path.  For example, it is perfectly
safe to pass '@' addresses directly to some ARPA gateway sites, in fact
that's the only way to get some messages through the gateways.  On the
other hand, if you plan to pass such an address through old-style
sites as well, or additional intermediate sites which also might
take their own actions on the '@', it helps to understand the 
handling that each site will be giving that address, and to often NOT
use the '@' (using instead the site.domain!user form) to pass
through intermediate sites or to destination sites which understand
that syntax.

Yes, this philosophy requires information about how various
sites will handle various addresses.  And yes, keeping track of such
information in our extremely hybridized environment takes some work.
But it certainly seems better in the long run than just closing our
eyes, gritting our teeth, and throwing addresses "blindly" down the line 
and hoping they won't screw up!

--Lauren--