🚀 go-pugleaf

les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) writes:

>Philosophically, I don't like any form of rerouting other than to the
>specified "next-hop" host, but realistically it is probably better
>to re-route to the right-most FQDN.

Yes, this should be reasonable, but how you look for an FQDN is very
important, as one of the problems you list in your article that I
reference is that other things can have dots in their names.  In
general, I short circuit by looking for recognized top level domains.
Basically, I have a class that defines them all.  Admittedly, it slows
down my mailer just a bitk, and if someone else uses a system that
looks and smells like ours but isn't, then a message could conceivably
be lost.

There is one failure that has occurred in the past when one short
circuits, that is really caused by people using forwarders without
their knowledge or permission.  Example:

From: lear@turbo.bio.net (some random internet site)
To: 2030@x001.z76.fidonet.org (some fidonet site)

If an intermediate site translates 2030@x001.z76.fidonet.org to
ucbvax!uunet!rutgers!apple!well!x001.z76.fidonet.org!2030, unless
prior arrangements have been made, it is quite likely that the address
will be rewritten back to 2030@x001.z76.fidonet.org.  A mailer loop.

-- 
Eliot Lear
[lear@turbo.bio.net]