Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!RUDY.FAC.CS.CMU.EDU!Rudy.Nedved
From: Rudy.Nedved@RUDY.FAC.CS.CMU.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: implementation question
Message-ID: <8812141208.AA06053@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 13 Dec 88 19:02:33 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 18


The problem (that may not be applicable to this issue any more) occured about
5 to 8 years ago that if you generated an error message at the SMTP level to a
client about a piece of mail being incorrect in some sense (bad address,
ambiguous user name, space quota exceeded for mailbox, etc) then the client
because of poor mail delivery system in use would not generate a message back
to the user or worst yet would simply say the mail could not be delivered.

The classic case was when SMTP would generate a multiline error response to
a RCPT TO:<> command indicating the name was ambiguous and what is was
ambiguous with. Many systems just blew it off or did not understand it.

This may not be the case any more but it is something to worry about. When
users send mail from a technological old and somewhat busted system to one
that is on the cutting edge and they don't understand what happned...they
tend to blame the site that listens to them....like the site that has
the better mail software.

-Rudy