erict@flatline.UUCP (j eric townsend) (06/16/88)
While reading all the debate over AT&T's withdrawal from third-party
mail forwarding, I got to thinking.
I thought it worked like this: Each of us takes on the mail links
we can afford. For the privelege of sending mail through other people's
machines, we let them send mail through ours.
It seems that AT&T doesn't like this deal anymore. Fine. Cut
AT&T off of *us*, and make them pay for and set up a seperate link
to each and every machine that they want to talk to outside of AT&T.
Imagine if management@{killer,rutgers,bellcore,etc} decided they didn't
like forwarding other people's mail. How long would their neighbors keep
their links? Forever? A while? Not too long?
Imagine if we all got greedy and decided not to forward mail for other
folks.
Think about it.
Me, I'm just a pseudo-leaf node. Mail *could* be forwarded through me,
but most of my neighbors are connected to the same houston<->world
gateway site as I am. One day, though, I may control a more important
site. I hope I remember all this then.
--
Skate UNIX or go home, boogie boy...
Spelling errors are directly related to how little time I have...
J. Eric Townsend ->uunet!nuchat!flatline!erict smail:511Parker#2,Hstn,Tx,77007
..!bellcore!tness1!/erict@flatline.UUCP (j eric townsend) (06/18/88)
In article <875@flatline.UUCP>, I write: > I thought it worked like this: Each of us takes on the mail links > we can afford. For the privelege of sending mail through other people's > machines, we let them send mail through ours. I've recieved some mail from AT&T employees concerning how much their long distance bill is, and how many people put ihnp4 as the start of their UUCP address... So maybe they are a tad justified in turning into a leaf node. I thought most everybody was running pathalias and a mailer that used it, making .sig paths unneccessary. -- Skate UNIX or go home, boogie boy... Spelling errors are directly related to how little time I have... J. Eric Townsend ->uunet!nuchat!flatline!erict smail:511Parker#2,Hstn,Tx,77007 ..!bellcore!tness1!/
wcf@psuhcx.psu.edu (Bill Fenner) (06/19/88)
Hey- AT&T - I've got an idea for you. Why don't you, instead of rerouting
mail where you don't connect to the next hop (i.e. sending to att!psuhcx!wcf),
dump it! Return it with an error message - you can't get there from here.
But let mail that's using your site just to pass through -
connectedtoatt!att!connectedtoatt!x!x!...
Just an idea. . .
--
Bitnet: wcf@psuhcx.bitnet Bill Fenner | "How can we dance
Internet: wcf@hcx.psu.edu | When the beds are burning"
UUCP: {gatech,cmcl2,rutgers}!psuvax1!psuhcx!wcf |
Fido: Sysop at 263/42 | Now wait a second . . .dewey@execu.UUCP (Dewey Henize) (06/19/88)
In article <897@flatline.UUCP> erict@flatline.UUCP (j eric townsend) writes: >In article <875@flatline.UUCP>, I write: > >> I thought it worked like this: Each of us takes on the mail links >> we can afford. For the privelege of sending mail through other people's >> machines, we let them send mail through ours. > [discussion about how much (?) AT&T is spending on long distance, etc] [[which is an interesting meta-idea in and of itself]] > >I thought most everybody was running pathalias and a mailer that >used it, making .sig paths unneccessary. >-- I'd love to be. But I just plain don't know how! Have the wonderful maps, finally figured out how to turn them into files, turn the files into various maps, but there it comes to a screeching halt. Somewhere in the millions of documents out there I bet hides a document on how you use mailtool on SunOS to use that stuff. Its gotta be a better way than using grep to make a pass on the file..... And now back to your previously scheduled upset :-) about AT&T and their charges..... >Skate UNIX or go home, boogie boy... >Spelling errors are directly related to how little time I have... >J. Eric Townsend ->uunet!nuchat!flatline!erict smail:511Parker#2,Hstn,Tx,77007 > ..!bellcore!tness1!/ -- =============================================================================== | execu!dewey Dewey Henize @ Execucom Systems Corp 512/346-3008 | | You don't think my employer APPROVES of these ideas, do you?? Sheesh! | ===============================================================================
kent@happym.UUCP (Kent Forschmiedt) (06/24/88)
In article <897@flatline.UUCP> erict@flatline.UUCP writes: >I've recieved some mail from AT&T employees concerning how >much their long distance bill is, and how many people >put ihnp4 as the start of their UUCP address... So maybe they are >a tad justified in turning into a leaf node. > >I thought most everybody was running pathalias and a mailer that >used it, making .sig paths unneccessary. I wonder if this has occurred to anybody... My Unix system is near-vanilla SVR2. Out of the box, the way AT&T sells it. The mailer that comes with System V is, well, minimal. It is entirely up to the user or an application (like rn or vnews) to generate paths for mail. It is, to say the least, difficult for an inexperienced user, or even an inexperienced sysadmin to get mail delivered to anywhere more than a few hops away with /bin/mail. Mailx doesn't help - the version that I have munges bang addresses and gets completely confused about Internet addresses (At least some of the bugs are documented in the man page...). Basically, the setup sucks. And I wonder... --------------------------------------- Why? --------------------------------------- Why doesn't AT&T include a decent mailer with their operating system? And, yes, include news, with LIBDIR/sys preconfigured to only handle map distribution (after reading the manual, the admin can figure out how to use the rest). If they had done so a few years ago, perhaps fewer people would put {ihnp4, cbosgd, uunet}!... in their signatures, and just put e.g. kent@happym.uucp instead. Maybe if AT&T recognized that they are the source of the least common denominator in Unix, they would recognize that they can make it work any way that they want. How many of the little sites out there are 286 or 386 boxes running SCO Xenix V or Microport SysV? How many SysV based systems are there? And how many, when you paid AT&T for your OS, got a decent mailer, one that could find a route to another site? -- Kent Forschmiedt -- kent@happym.UUCP, tikal!camco!happym!kent Happy Man Corporation 206-282-9598
friedl@vsi.UUCP (Stephen J. Friedl) (06/24/88)
In article <457@happym.UUCP>, kent@happym.UUCP (Kent Forschmiedt) writes: > Why doesn't AT&T include a decent mailer with their operating > system? And, yes, include news, with LIBDIR/sys preconfigured to > only handle map distribution (after reading the manual, the admin > can figure out how to use the rest). Gasp! AT&T would be out of their minds to try to support smail or netnews. The *overwhelming* majority of AT&T's customers (with the 3B2s, at least) have no interest whatsoever in netnews or even intermachine email; those living in the technical and academic worlds have no idea how uninterested most end-users are in this kind of thing. They buy their computers to run payroll or property management or insurance administration. In addition, most AT&T UNIX machines don't have C compilers. Really, we are in the minority. AT&T has enough trouble helping people plug in their terminals, much less get netnews going. Please do not underestimate the resources required to support any kind of product (especially netnews). I could go on and on about this, but I won't. AT&T will never support netnews to their customers. Steve P.S. - this is not a flame, just an observation :-) -- Steve Friedl V-Systems, Inc. (714) 545-6442 3B2-kind-of-guy friedl@vsi.com {backbones}!vsi.com!friedl attmail!vsi!friedl Nancy Reagan on the Free Software Foundation : "Just say GNU"
sl@van-bc.UUCP (pri=-10 Stuart Lynne) (06/26/88)
In article <728@vsi.UUCP> friedl@vsi.UUCP (Stephen J. Friedl) writes: >In article <457@happym.UUCP>, kent@happym.UUCP (Kent Forschmiedt) writes: > Gasp! AT&T would be out of their minds to try to support >smail or netnews. The *overwhelming* majority of AT&T's >customers (with the 3B2s, at least) have no interest whatsoever >in netnews or even intermachine email; those living in the >technical and academic worlds have no idea how uninterested most >end-users are in this kind of thing. They buy their computers to >run payroll or property management or insurance administration. >In addition, most AT&T UNIX machines don't have C compilers. >Really, we are in the minority. > I could go on and on about this, but I won't. AT&T will >never support netnews to their customers. Well don't be to sure. SCO offers a News disk. And reputedly have two people working on bringing up 3.0. It doesn't come standard, but it's free if you ask for it. I think the main reason that smail and it's ilk arn't being supported is just a lack of interest at the time. Remember that the software being distributed today (ie Sys V/386) was essentially designed and packaged about two years ago. It is quite probable that in the future something along the lines of smail will find it's way into general release. Complications which may help or hinder this are whether AT&T and other vendors think that they might be able to sell it - and whether any of the commercial services could be tied into to do delivery. -- Stuart.Lynne@wimsey.bc.ca {ubc-cs,uunet}!van-bc!sl Vancouver,BC,604-937-7532
)) (06/27/88)
People might be interested: 386/IX from ISC does include sendmail, smail and
pathalias. Somewhat out-of-date versions (smail 2.3 last I looked) but
certainly better than nothing. There are man-pages for them - but the
documentation is a bit scanty on how to use/install them. Eg: you have to run
"/usr/lib/install.mail" and answer a few questions. (BTW: if you don't,
mail from your 386 box will not give the originating address to neighbors
properly)
If nothing else you should be able to do some sort of smart-host forwarding.
The man pages do allude to acquiring maps from neighbors. Would be nice if ISC
include a couple-page document on how to set up e-mail.
No, they don't include netnews. Just as well - there's enough floppies
in the installation as it is.
--
Chris Lewis, Spectrix Microsystems Inc, Phone: (416)-474-1955
UUCP: {uunet!mnetor, utcsri!utzoo, lsuc, yunexus}!spectrix!clewis
Moderator of the Ferret Mailing List (ferret-list,ferret-request@spectrix)