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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!van-bc!ubc-cs!alberta!aunro!atha!lyndon
From: lyndon@cs.AthabascaU.CA (Lyndon Nerenberg)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: Regarding earlier post on domains.
Message-ID: <1742@aurora.AthabascaU.CA>
Date: 6 Mar 90 19:39:10 GMT
References: <75@dynasys.UUCP>
Organization: Athabasca University
Lines: 36

In article <75@dynasys.UUCP> jessea@dynasys.UUCP (Jesse W. Asher) writes:
>Question:  Why in the world would I want
>to have mail sent to another site just so that site could send it to
>me?  If, for example, my domain is "dynasys.com", what is the advantage
>of having my mail sent to the entity that takes care of the "com" domain
>only to then be sent to me?

That's not what happens. If the site is an internet site, and you
have an internet forwarder, mail for your domain originating at an
internet site will go directly to your forwarder (one hop in most
cases) who will forward it (via uucp presumably) to your domain
gateway. For example, .AthabascaU.CA is not connected to the internet.
Our internet forwarder is decwrl.dec.com. They advertise an MX record
for our domain, so any internet mail is sent there. Our gateway
polls them to pick up our mail. I would guess our average hop count
for mail from internet sites is around 2.5 by the time it gets to
decwrl.

For uucp sites running pathalias and a smart router, they will pick
up a route to your domain via the map data. Again, an example.
Our uucp fateway for AthabascaU.CA is a machine known as atha. If
your routing database is set up properly, any mail you send to
foo.athabascau.ca will route ...!atha!foo.athabascau.ca.

Bitnet has similar provisions for gatewaying, as does CDNnet and
most (but not all) other "networks."

If a host is on both the Internet and the UUCP network, it's
their decision as to which routing match takes precedence. Most
favour the internet, since it provides much faster delivery to
the end point (gateway) machine.
-- 
Lyndon Nerenberg  VE6BBM / Computing Services / Athabasca University
     {alberta,decwrl}!atha!lyndon || lyndon@cs.AthabascaU.CA

                     UREP: Peru in disguise?