rbbb@rice.EDU.UUCP (04/02/87)
narten@purdue.edu says: > mailbox. Presumably, as domain names get extended, we will be able to > do that. Any mail you send to a user can go directly to the machine > where the his/her mailbox resides. No forwarding at the site would be > needed. I may misunderstand you, but how can you tell where my mailbox resides? If you look at my "Message-Id", you might guess that you could send to "rbbb@proserpina.rice.edu", and you would be wrong. I read my mail at "titan.rice.edu", but you should just send it to "rice.edu", and let it be forwarded to whereever I happen to currently live. It is difficult to propagate precise information about my whereabouts to ALL the machines on our net, and much more difficult when you consider that I am certainly not the only user here. It is much much simpler to have every machine except the one where my mailbox resides boot my mail to "rice.edu", and let "rice.edu" forward it to my home. Obviously, we take great pains to keep rice.edu up and running, but it is no more vital than our gateway, our line to the IMP in Austin, or the IMP itself. I don't see how extended domain names will help this. David