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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!mcvax!ukc!eagle!pc
From: pc@eagle.ukc.ac.uk (R.P.A.Collinson)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: JANET troubles
Message-ID: <2885@eagle.ukc.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 27-Apr-87 18:07:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: eagle.2885
Posted: Mon Apr 27 18:07:56 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 30-Apr-87 02:31:02 EDT
References: <701@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <572@stracs.cs.strath.ac.uk> <1571@umd5.umd.edu> <1582@munnari.oz>
Reply-To: pc@ukc.UUCP (R.P.A.Collinson)
Distribution: all
Organization: Computing Lab, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK.
Lines: 44
Keywords: JANET, UK, gateways, help!

Some folk-lore instantly springs into existence at every one of the mailings
under this heading. Can I dispel some please.

a)	We run exactly the same mail system as UCL. If we receive a
message which is badly addressed or fails for any other reason in the
mailer, we attempt to return it to the sender. To save cost, we now
truncate the message. I expect that a number of these returned messages
are lost - but then this will always be the case when you consider the
general difficulty of asking your local mail program to `reply' to
mail.

Please mail to uknet@ukc if you are experiencing any problem.

b)	We currently attempt to deliver all correctly addressed mail
inbound to sites in the UK, we don't like to do this to sites which do
not appear in the UUCP maps for the UK because it incurs expenditure
which cannot be passed onto the end user's site.

Outbound mail is constrained by an authorisation system using the name
of the UK site. We will only forward mail FROM the sites in the UUCP
maps for the UK, this CAN mean the loss of an error response emitted
by an unregistered site to you.

c)	Assuming that the mail was coming into the UK via ukc, then the
problem with the St. Andrews VAX was, I think due to the FTP mechanism
(not the US FTP, I hasten to add - but the UK `Blue Book FTP' system).
FTP is supplied with addresses from a central register and it seemed
reasonable that if a name appeared there saying that the machine
would/could get mail, then FTP would keep trying in the fervent belief
that someone someday would wake up to the fact that there was nothing
coming in. We have altered this policy and now operate a 3 week bounce
time on mail (this is perhaps a too long, but it can be tuned and that
is what we may do).

(I think that the case in point MIGHT have been due to a mismatch between
our FTP system and that running on VMS machines - ie a `bug').

d)	We accept addresses in any domain order and swap them to the
`correct' order for the appropriate network. I believe that the UK
Bitnet gateway is planning to do this in June or perhaps July.


e)	I should stop, the yeast for my bread is erupting out of the
cup.