Friedrich@cup.portal.com (Frank G Kienast) (12/08/88)
About how reliable is is the "nondelivery notification" on network mail, and about how long does it take? I recently tried to contact a friend at the University of Virginia. I sent the letter to my friend's id @virginia.edu. He never received the mail, and I never got it back. As a test, I tried sending letters to the following: xyz@bogus.edu xyz66@virginia.edu Now I assume these letters should have bounced rather quickly, but it has been four days and I havn't seen any trace of them. Is this normal, or is it just the system I'm on (Portal)? I know that in the past I have received mail responses to my Usenet postings (though I guess I have no way of knowing if I have received all or even the majority of the letters that were actually sent). Friedrich@cup.portal.com
Friedrich@cup.portal.com (Frank G Kienast) (12/12/88)
The following is a summary of responses I received regarding my problem with bounced mail not getting back to me, and what I have learned about network mail in general while trying to contact my friend at virginia.edu: Because of the large number of individual machines at the University of Virginia, a person has to add their name and the machine they wish to receive mail on to a database in order to receive mail sent to just their login @virginia.edu. They can receive mail without registering if the sender knows what machine they are on and sends it to person@machine.virginia.edu. I suspect that any organization having a large number of machines would be similar. Some newer mailers will send a receipt or "successful delivery" notice to you if you include an extra header line similar to the following: Return-receipt-to: your-name@wherever-you-are. Finally, sometimes a bounce notification does get back to you long after you sent the original message. I finally got such notifications a week after I had sent my original letter and the subsequent test messages.