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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!brl-adm!umd5!zben
From: zben@umd5.umd.edu (Ben Cranston)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: JANET troubles
Message-ID: <1574@umd5.umd.edu>
Date: Sun, 26-Apr-87 23:20:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: umd5.1574
Posted: Sun Apr 26 23:20:34 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 27-Apr-87 02:48:44 EDT
References: <701@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <572@stracs.cs.strath.ac.uk> <1571@umd5.umd.edu> <1582@munnari.oz>
Reply-To: zben@umd5.umd.edu.UUCP (Ben Cranston)
Distribution: all
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Lines: 52
Keywords: JANET, UK, gateways, help!
Summary: More on AC.UK controversy

In article <1582@munnari.oz> kre@munnari.oz (Robert Elz) writes:

> 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.

I assume the "full domain name" means to transform "ac.uk" to "ukacrl" but
leave "<anything>.ac.uk" alone.  This would probably work.  My local problem
is use of somebody else's code and database for site lookup, and the said
somebody else not wanting to include special cases like this.  On balance,
I'm not sure I disagree with him...

> 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.

I guess you mean the RSCS out-of-band information is EMAILDEV and UKACRL.
I wasn't aware that one could arbitrarily set these fields, due to system
security considerations.  That is, I had always assumed there was a
virtual machine called EMAILDEV that routed the mail.  In any case, if a
mail relay relied upon the RSCS out-of-band information to create the
SMTP "MAIL FROM:" data, the situation you describe would occur.  After
some thought I coded my relay to attempt to extract the information from
the "From:" (or "Sender:") information in the header, and to ignore the
RSCS information (which is also something like SMTPUSER WISCVM for mail
that has come through the WISCVM gateway).

So now when I process mail from the UKACRL gateway it is erroniously
marked as "MAIL FROM:<luser%xx.yy.zz@AC.UK>" instead of being erroniously
marked as "MAIL FROM:<EMAILDEV@UKACRL.BITNET>" ... fooey.

Some days it doesn't even pay to get out of bed.

> 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.

If people won't play by the rules, there's not much a poor postmaster can
do except to forewarn the innocent.
-- 
                    umd5.UUCP    <= {seismo!mimsy,ihnp4!rlgvax}!cvl!umd5!zben
Ben Cranston zben @ umd2.UMD.EDU    Kingdom of Merryland UniSys 1100/92
                    umd2.BITNET     "via HASP with RSCS"