Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!osu-cis!att-cb!att-ih!ihnp4!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.UUCP (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: ! and @ -- which RFC ?
Message-ID: <4634@chinet.UUCP>
Date: 6 Apr 88 20:51:36 GMT
References: <12798@brl-adm.ARPA> <4557@chinet.UUCP> <2052@epimass.EPI.COM> <1121@cblpf.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: les@chinet.UUCP (Leslie Mikesell)
Distribution: na
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 26

In article <1121@cblpf.ATT.COM> tgt@cblpf.ATT.COM (45264-Tim Thompson) writes:
>For one thing, why would your have a bunch of uucp machines that only know
>! addresses (which are probably actually routes, NOT addresses)? With
>the free smail package, and the ease with which it can be installed, there
>just doesn't seem to be a reason why a uucp machine can not understand
>the "@" syntax.

Two reasons:
  The machines are small and fairly loaded as is; I don't want each of
them to have to store the names of all the machines in the known universe
or to search such a table every time mail is sent.
  Also, the machines are either on a network or connected by dedicated
lines. Most do not have modems, so mail to the rest of the world must be
routed through a machine that has modems (and fewer users).

>One clarification:
>
>   ...!uunet!epimass.epi.com!jbuck is NOT an address, it is a route. Using
>   An address would be:
>	jbuck@epimass.epi.com

The all ! route should work for me, if the gateway machine is set up to
reroute.  However, it seems like this would be a common problem and that
there should be a defined syntax to force a route to a known machine and
request it to interpret the remaining part as an address (perhaps this
is it?).
          Les Mikesell