Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!munnari!kre
From: kre@munnari.oz (Robert Elz)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: JANET troubles
Message-ID: <1582@munnari.oz>
Date: Sun, 26-Apr-87 07:13:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: munnari.1582
Posted: Sun Apr 26 07:13:18 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 26-Apr-87 23:17:42 EDT
References: <701@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <572@stracs.cs.strath.ac.uk> <1571@umd5.umd.edu>
Distribution: all
Organization: Comp Sci, Melbourne Uni, Australia
Lines: 33
Keywords: JANET, UK, gateways, help!
Summary: Avoid Rutherford if at all possible

In article <1571@umd5.umd.edu>, zben@umd5.umd.edu (Ben Cranston) writes:
> The semistandard BitNet domain route table has "ac.uk" pointed to ukacrl.
> This makes life somewhat difficult for those of us who try to provide
> both the Internet and BitNet addressing domains...

Yes, this is a disaster, though by assuming that anything from a host
masquerading as "ac.uk" (full domain name) is really from ukacrl.bitnet
its possible to restore some sense to the universe.

What's worse is that they set the return-path on mail they gateway
from JANET to the rest of the world to "EMAILDEV@UKACRL.BITNET" (I
guess the ".BITNET" isn't there while still in bitnet itself).

That means that anyone in the UK who sends mail out through that
gateway, and sends it to an bad address (for whatever reason) is
never going to get their message back.

It used to be true that there wasn't even a mailbox at that address,
so that any mail bounced back to it, was just returned to the site
that originally bounced it.  I'd hate to count how much mail I received
because of this (ie: postmaster@munnari.oz.au bounces mail because of a bad
Australian address, then Rutherford bounce it back to postmaster@munnari.oz.au
(me) because EMAILDEV doesn't exist).  I haven't seen any of this kind
of double bounced mail for a while now, so its possible this is finally
fixed.  Someone might even forward on the bouncing mail to the correct
recipient.

But in general, I would advise everyone not on bitnet to avoid that gateway,
its clearly inferior to both UCL and UKC by several orders of magnitude.
What's more it means that your mail goes through the tortuous transformations
needed to get on and off bitnet, for no particularly good reason.

Robert Elz			kre@munnari.oz.au