root@libove.UUCP (The Super User) (04/08/88)
I just noticed an interesting possible problem. With smail 2.5 running on my machine, and pathalias generating a pathfile from the maps in comp.mail.maps, the domain ".edu" is routed through rutgers at present. Unfortunately, some sites now have domain style names (e.g. "vms.cis.pittsburgh.edu" with is really PITTVMS.BITNET) and mail directly to them will be routed through rutgers... Will rutgers know how to route to such sites? Somehow I don't expect so... Does anyone have any ideas on how to get around this, without explicitly listing every bitnet node in the world in the pathfile? Jay (Jay.Libove@andrew.cmu.edu pitt!darth!libove!libove)
david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) (04/09/88)
In article <17@libove.UUCP> root@libove.UUCP (The Super User) writes: >I just noticed an interesting possible problem. With smail 2.5 >running on my machine, and pathalias generating a pathfile from >the maps in comp.mail.maps, the domain ".edu" is routed through >rutgers at present. Unfortunately, some sites now have domain >style names (e.g. "vms.cis.pittsburgh.edu" with is really >PITTVMS.BITNET) and mail directly to them will be routed through >rutgers... Will rutgers know how to route to such sites? Somehow >I don't expect so... If those people are doing the right thing then the nameserver for pittsburgh.edu advertises an MX record for somewhere, 'ang on and I'll check. -- Yes, vms.cis.pittsburgh.edu has an MX record pointing at "vm1.cis ...". An MX record is something which says -- for this particular domain name, you should route mail through a particular machine. And you can have more than one MX record for a domain name with different preference levels for each one -- in case the first machine is down a second one can be tried and so on. MX records are also used for places that aren't directly on any of the networks. For instance, one I had to look up recently for some reason. "uop.edu" is the University of the Pacific. It's a little college in California that's not on anything like the arpanet or bitnet. They instead do UUCP with UC Davis to do their mail traffic. UC Davis advertises MX records for them pointing at ucdavis.edu. I can just send mail to todd@uop.uop.edu and it'll get to the guy that one of my female friends is flirting with recently. And it just works. -- <---- David Herron -- The E-Mail guy <david@ms.uky.edu> <---- or: {rutgers,uunet,cbosgd}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET <---- <---- I don't have a Blue bone in my body!