Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!adm!MRC@PANDA.PANDA.COM
From: MRC@PANDA.PANDA.COM (Mark Crispin)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: trying multiple addresses
Message-ID: <11842@brl-adm.ARPA>
Date: 16 Feb 88 08:08:35 GMT
Sender: news@brl-adm.ARPA
Lines: 22

Clive -

     The NIC host table is a disaster, and the only way to fix the many
problems associated with it is to abandon it for domains.  Supported
TOPS-20 domain and mail software was announced a while ago; perhaps you
should consider adopting it at your site.  [As a side note, the problem
with Sierra's net 10 address being in the host table will go away very
soon since the plug is being pulled on Sierra.]

     Trying every possible IP address for a host which fails to respond
on its "primary" IP address is a recipe for performance disaster for any
background mailer with a large workload.  We're talking about thousands
of messages/day, friends, not a piddly couple of hundred.

     Furthermore, we all can rattle off the cases where the primary IP
address was wrong.  We can do this because there have been so few of
them!  What's more, most of those few are host-table only problems.  If
you run obsolete software, you should expect to have to put in some
maintenance on your own.

-- Mark --
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