Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.UUCP (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: active rerouting
Message-ID: <6601@chinet.UUCP>
Date: 16 Sep 88 15:42:07 GMT
References: <4740@b-tech.UUCP> <4747@b-tech.UUCP> <4748@b-tech.UUCP> <6581@chinet.UUCP> <2105@edsews.EDS.COM>
Reply-To: les@chinet.UUCP (Leslie Mikesell)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 35

In article <2105@edsews.EDS.COM> roberts@edsews.EDS.COM (Ted Roberts) writes:

>> Suppose
>> you want siteC to rout siteA!siteB!siteC!domain.dom!user or e
>> siteA!siteB!siteC!user@domain.dom.

 >These are not the same thing.  The first route would send to siteA, then
 >siteB, then siteC and siteC would route to user@domain.dom which they
 >would know how to do since they know how to resolve domain addresses
 >(you hope:-).  The second would attempt to send to domain.dom, then to
 >siteA, then to siteB, then to site C, then to user.  This is because the
 >"@" syntax takes precedence over the "!" syntax.
 
If siteA and siteB are vanilla uucp mailers they will forward both forms
to siteC because they won't know anything about the "@" syntax.

>>  SiteA is your uucp neighbor which
>> you would obviously know about.  Doesn't this depend on siteB also
>> using uucp style forwarding which could easily change without your
>> knowledge since it is not a direct contact?

 >Maybe I don't understand what you mean here, but if you're saying that
 >they will all of a sudden and without warning start trashing routes that
 >use the "!" syntax then the answer is no.  I'm not sure what you mean by
 >"uucp style forwarding", do you mean versus being directly on the internet?
 >If so, I would assume that they would also be able to handle that syntax.

Uucp style forwarding looks only at the next host, left to right and expects
"!" as the separator.  As you noted, if siteB changes from vanilla uucp to
running smail, sendmail, or becomes an internet site, the interpretation of
the "@" notation will change.  Will the notation:
   siteA!siteB!siteC!domain.dom!user continue to work if siteB becomes an
internet site and uses that instead of the uucp connection to siteC?

Les Mikesell