jcf3703@ttardis.UUCP (chap flack) (09/19/89)
I have a specific question to which a specific answer would be great (but a
general answer would be better, so I never need to ask again)....
I've been UNIXless and netless for about four years now... Back then, I never
dealt with Internet address formats, we just knew the routing to use for the
places we wanted to go. Now here I am, four years later, in Michigan instead
of Minnesota, looking at a collection of adjacent node names I don't even
recognize, feeling rusty and sitting in my living room logged into a public-
access system 10 miles away (and therefore with no manuals). I'm lost!!!
OK. So the smart routers (I'm told sharkey has one) can interpret
Internet addresses and help me out. I recently received snail mail from a
man I worked with 4 years ago, saying that his address is chenry@carleton.edu.
So as a test drive, I tried sending something to
cfctech!sharkey!chenry@carleton.edu.
Those of you who know how to do this probably don't need me to tell you that
didn't work. Sharkey's daemon complained that there's no chenry on sharkey.
So what's the correct syntax? A specific answer (i.e., how to get mail to
chenry) would be nice; a general answer (how Internet addressing works) would
be very nice. If it's a published standard that I can find in the Detroit
Public Lib (ANSI, IEEE, ...) or WSU (ISO, ...), just a reference will do...
If it's not on paper, but someone on the net has access to a formal document
describing it and can email that to me, that's good too.
Thanks for any help.
-chap ..uunet!edsews!rel!ttardis!jcf3703
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chap flack ... uunet ! edsews ! rel ! ttardis ! jcf3703
brought to you by the kind hospitality of the ttardis public-access people
any views expressed here are my own (or were when i wrote them)barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin) (09/20/89)
In article <2274@ttardis.UUCP> jcf3703@ttardis.UUCP (chap flack) writes: >OK. So the smart routers (I'm told sharkey has one) can interpret >Internet addresses and help me out. I recently received snail mail from a >man I worked with 4 years ago, saying that his address is chenry@carleton.edu. >So as a test drive, I tried sending something to >cfctech!sharkey!chenry@carleton.edu. >Those of you who know how to do this probably don't need me to tell you that >didn't work. Sharkey's daemon complained that there's no chenry on sharkey. The problem is that you are mixing UUCP (host!user) addressing and Internet (user@host) addressing. There's no standard precedence for the two syntaxes; it's up to the mailer configuration on any particular system to decide. I suspect that it is ending up being interpreted as cfctech! ((sharkey!chenry) @carlton.edu) If this is so, then it indicates that cfctech also has a "smart router", so you should try "cfctech!chenry@carlton.edu". Barry Margolin Thinking Machines Corp. barmar@think.com {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
bph@buengc.BU.EDU (Blair P. Houghton) (09/21/89)
In article <29725@news.Think.COM> barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin) writes: >In article <2274@ttardis.UUCP> jcf3703@ttardis.UUCP (chap flack) writes: >>chenry@carleton.edu. >>So as a test drive, I tried sending something to >>cfctech!sharkey!chenry@carleton.edu. [...describes bounce from sharkey...] > > I suspect that it is ending up being >interpreted as > > cfctech! ((sharkey!chenry) @carlton.edu) You say: cfctech to carleton to sharkey to chenry [Triple play! :-)] >If this is so, then it indicates that cfctech also has a "smart >router", so you should try "cfctech!chenry@carlton.edu". Huh? The way a bang-at address is interpreted (is it really undefined) is to send to the at-machine, then start down the bang-path. It would look like carleton to cfctech to sharkey to chenry and the guy's address would have to be chenry@sharkey for that to work. It's obvious that our friend only has to use the address "chenry@carleton", since the mail got through carleton to cfctech, and then to sharkey, which bounced it. What I'd like to know is, why not just fix mailers to accept the address as "carleton to cfctech to..." instead of all this !%@. --Blair "*&%$@#$"
barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin) (09/21/89)
In article <4270@buengc.BU.EDU> bph@buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton) writes: >In article <29725@news.Think.COM> barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin) writes: >>In article <2274@ttardis.UUCP> jcf3703@ttardis.UUCP (chap flack) writes: >>>cfctech!sharkey!chenry@carleton.edu. >> cfctech! ((sharkey!chenry) @carlton.edu) >The way a bang-at address is interpreted (is it really undefined) >is to send to the at-machine, then start down the bang-path. It really is undefined. Many systems even parse it differently depending on the source. For instance, if the address foo!bar@baz comes in from the UUCP mail server the "!" is parsed first; if the same address were to come from an SMTP mailer server the "@" would be parsed first. >It's obvious that our friend only has to use the address "chenry@carleton", >since the mail got through carleton to cfctech, and then to sharkey, >which bounced it. That's a possibility. In fact, that was my first thought. But I assumed that he would know whether his own machine knew how to route SMTP addresses automatically, and wouldn't have bothered with the UUCP addressing if he didn't need it. >What I'd like to know is, why not just fix mailers to accept the address as > > "carleton to cfctech to..." > >instead of all this !%@. That wouldn't be any easier than getting them to all have smart routers so users could all just say "user@domain"; they both involve fixing thousands of mailers. And during the transition period (five to ten years), you'll have the problem of THREE different mail address formats instead of just two. The general direction of mail routing is away from requiring users to specify routes explicitly (e.g. the MX records in the domain system); computers are supposed to be good at figuring out those kinds of things. Barry Margolin Thinking Machines Corp. barmar@think.com {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) (09/22/89)
In article <2274@ttardis.UUCP> jcf3703@ttardis.UUCP (chap flack) writes: >chenry@carleton.edu. >So as a test drive, I tried sending something to >cfctech!sharkey!chenry@carleton.edu. (much other commentary deleted) My suggestion is to stay with a bang-only syntax, viz cfctech!sharkey!carleton.edu!chenry which should have the desired effects. --Ed