🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <701@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> kagle@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu.UUCP (Jonathan C. Kagle) writes:
>
>	For the past month or so, I have been trying to get in touch with a
>friend at The University of St. Andrews, in Scotland.  Unfortunately, the
>mail is swallowed somewhere along the way there. [...]
> [...]                I can send mail to:
>username%uk.ac.st-and.sava@ac.uk with no positive (reply) or negative (error
>message) feedback from St. Andrews.  I have tried to get through to the post-
>master/mistress, but I have recieved no reply.
> [...]
>	Could someone help me get through?  Have I found a mailer bug?  Should
>I use another gateway?  HELP!

  You are asking questions in a sensitive area. There has been some heated 
exchanges on this subject at this end; This reply is therefore worded somewhat
carefully in the light of recent events. I have recently returned to 
the UK from the States and therefore have experienced the problems of the kind
you describe from both ends.

  There are three main gateways into the UK, (and they are all described in
the CACM article on Notable Networks), and as far as I know, each of 
them has to pay bi-directionally on transatlantic mail. Therefore each of your
attempts to mail to St. Andrews was billed to the gateway, or St. Andrews.

When the network in the UK was first set up funding was available and also the
common carrier made its facilities available free/cheap. Now this has changed,
and real money is paid to send and recieve mail/news and at the same time
the Universities and other institutions are feeling the pinch of austerity
measures caused by the paymasters wishing to spend their money elsewhere. As a
result some sites decided not to subscribe to all the gateways. As the 
gateways themselves also had the same funding problems they had to make some
policy decisions on what to do with mail arriving for a site that would no 
longer pay to receive its mail. To return the message would mean that the
gateway would have to pay to handle the mail twice and recieve no 
re-imbursement; they therefore decided to just forward it to /dev/null.

  I am not claiming that this is what has happened with your mail, that 
depends on the current relationship between your recipient, his host site,
and the gateway; I have no specific information in your case. I would like to
offer advice to you on the best routing that would enable your message to get
through, but current circumstances make that impossible in a public forum. It
would be regarded as an attempt to yell "fire" in a crowded theatre. 
Particularly when in this case there are not many exits from the theatre. I
will however endeavor to mail you directly with some helpful advice, unless
I am strongly advised not to do so by local gateway authorities.

  It should therefore be concluded that there is no reliable routing path from
the US to the UK for unsolicited mail. If your mail is of particular 
importance your site should make arrangements to connect directly with any
destination site in the UK using X.25 over IPSS. All that remains to be done
is to agree on the protocol to be used. (In other words, should your site send
packets in UK format, or should your recipient understand your sites 
protocol?)

   With regard to trying to contact the Postmaster, note that a recent survey
of JANET sites showed that only 51% (330 of 642) of Postmasters at registered
sites would respond to requests. Some sites do not even implement Postmaster 
despite RFC822 and a similar UK standard. I know for a fact that many of the 
systems at my site do not have an active Postmaster, and mail just builds up 
for Postmaster, root and the like. The administrators claim they have better 
things to do than handle silly mail problems (Their words).

  I hope this description of the current state of affairs helps put you in
the picture, and also educates a wider audience at the same time.

Disclaimers:  This posting represents the views of the writer and do not
form an official opinion of his employers, or the network administrators
at this site or any other UK site or UK gateway. No critisism of the efforts
of the network staff or administrators at any site or gateway is intended.
They are doing a fine job in difficult circumstances.
-- 
--
> Brian Tompsett. Department of Computer Science, University of Edinburgh,
> JCMB, The King's Buildings, Mayfield Road, EDINBURGH, EH9 3JZ, Scotland, U.K.
> Telephone:         +44 31 667 1081 x3332.
> JANET:  bct@uk.ac.ed.ecsvax  ARPA: bct%ecsvax.ed.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk
> USENET: bct@ecsvax.ed.ac.uk  UUCP: ...!seismo!mcvax!ukc!ecsvax.ed.ac.uk!bct
> BITNET: psuvax1!ecsvax.ed.ac.uk!bct or bct%ecsvax.ed.ac.uk@earn.rl.ac.uk