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From: vixie@palo-alto.DEC.COM (Paul Vixie)
Newsgroups: news.admin,comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: The rebirth of USENET
Message-ID: <3095@palo-alto.DEC.COM>
Date: 17 Jun 88 01:41:15 GMT
References: <585@cbnews.ATT.COM> <1100@bellboy.UUCP>
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation, Western Research Lab
Lines: 41

In article <1100@bellboy.UUCP> hack@bellboy.UUCP (Greg Hackney) writes:
# In article <585@cbnews.ATT.COM> mark@stargate.COM (Mark Horton) writes:
# > Mail into and out of AT&T through the "att" gateway will continue.
# > Comments?
# 
# Only if it is from an AT&T site, or whose final destination
# is an AT&T site (from what I understand). The question I must
# ask myself is, do I want a connection bad enough to pay for the
# phone costs of passing email to AT&T employees, for their benefit.

There are actually going to be three separate 'att' machines in three
different cities.  And mail sent x!att!y will work, even if x and y
are both non-AT&T sites.  I think AT&T's plan is basically to disallow
mail along x!att!another-att!yet-another-att!y, that is, they'd rather
not have their internal network used for non-AT&T traffic.

I don't blame them.  Most companies have a well-connected gateway which
forwards vast multitudes of local and some long distance traffic --
between the gateway's non-company neighbors -- in addition to being
the point of contact between all internal sites and all external sites.

I don't think AT&T will only speak to their neighbors to send and receive
AT&T traffic.  They could do this, but it doesn't seem likely to me.
It's more likely that 'att' will still handle thousands of messages
per day of non-AT&T traffic, picking them up from direct UUCP neighbors
and sending them to others.

Does this bug you?  I'm sure all of "att"'s direct UUCP neighbors will
be well served by "att" as a local hub, well enough served that "att"'s
use of their neighbors to forward AT&T's internal traffic will not be
a bother.

Again, AT&T seems to be saying: use our machine, but not our internal
network.  And given the business they're in, that makes great sense to me.

Disclaimer: I'm not speaking for Digital.
-- 
Paul Vixie
Digital Equipment Corporation	Work:  vixie@dec.com	Play:  paul@vixie.UUCP
Western Research Laboratory	 uunet!decwrl!vixie	   uunet!vixie!paul
Palo Alto, California, USA	  +1 415 853 6600	   +1 415 864 7013