Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mailrus!cornell!batcomputer!sun.soe.clarkson.edu!ahd
From: ahd@sun.soe!clutx.clarkson.edu (Drew Derbyshire,,,9143397425)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Domain Registration (was Re: rewriting FROM: lines)
Message-ID: <3135@sun.soe.clarkson.edu>
Date: 29 May 89 23:04:09 GMT
References: <8577@chinet.chi.il.us>
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From article <8577@chinet.chi.il.us>, by les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell):
> In article <3400012@eecs.nwu.edu> gore@eecs.nwu.edu (Jacob Gore) writes:
> 
>>>  a!x.y.z!b!you  (replace ! with your favorite character)
> 
>>(That's not an address, it's the end of a path.  Your correspondent would
>>still need to figure out how to get to 'a'.)
> 
> Yes, that's what I meant -- I'd like to see a standard for tacking paths
> onto both ends of a domain address.
> 

If you are dealing with RFC-822 mail, the RFC does support explicit
routing in the form of the prefix "@host:", such as:

	@a:@x.y.z:you@b

Note that unlike bang (!) routing, this should work with any real
RFC-822 mailer, such as the Columbia mailer used by most (read: almost
all) Bitnet VM sites.

> B might be a direct neighbor, but no one but x.y.z needs to know *how*,
> and only the person who says his address is x.y.z!b!person needs to
> know that x.y.z is a forwarder.  I can't see this as being any more
> difficult than becoming b.x.y.z!person or person@b.x.y.z which depends
> on your relationship with x.y.z and generates extra work for thousands
> of machines that will probably never send mail to b.

The basic failure of this argument is that you _must_ know everyone you
will ever send mail to, and that you will personally send mail to
update them to boot.  I have 98 (count 'em, 98) addresses in my
regularly pruned alias file, and do you want me to notify all of them
just because I added a new poll to my PC's server list?  Many of those
people will kill the address by mistake or on purpose, and will never
have the new address.

Drew Derbyshire
Clarkson University Class of 1989 (7 years late)

Internet: ahd@clutx.clarkson.edu        U.S. Mail: 578 Broadway, Apt 6
Voice:    914-339-7425                             Kingston, NY 12401