🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1207@stracs.cs.strath.ac.uk> jim@cs.strath.ac.uk writes:

> 	The JANET/Internet gateway is currently at University College
> London. It permits telnet and mail traffic to authorised users only. If
> either the sender or recipient of the mail message is not authorised,
> UCL won't forward the mail and they might not even return it with an
> explanatory message to you.

My experience is that unregistered users (ie me) do receive mail through
nss.cs.ucl.ac.uk.  I'm in the process of moving my mailing-list
subscriptions to bitnet (see below) but if people use MX-capable mailers
any routing I specify often gets ignored.

> 	I understand that UCL have entered JANET domain names as MX
> records with the NIC. If your mail system is on the Internet and
> understands MX records, then mailing user@somesite.ac.uk will work if
> the user is registered with UCL. [The MX records point at the ARPA side
> of the UCL gateway.] Percent-style routing also works - i.e.
> user%somesite.ac.uk@ucl-cs.arpa - though this shouldn't be necessary on
> the Internet these days.

Again, registration into Janet is not (currently) required.  One would
hope that if it was, sites with NO registered users (ie here) would have
their MX records point at either uunet or a bitnet gateway.

> and UKC recoup their costs from sites who register with them. For
> unregistered sites, UKC say that they will silently throw the mail away
> - sending it back costs them money. In practice, they let the mail
> through, but this will stop if the costs escalate.

I think Peter Collinson said their were sending a "taster" to the
recipient: "We have received mail for you from Xyzzy@foo.bar subject
Whatever and because you are unregistered we have dropped it on the
floor".

> I have never been able to send mail into BITNET via the gateway and get
> a reply through the same gateway.

No problem!  I run all my mail that way.  Quote your return address as
BattenIG%cs.bham.ac.uk@cunyvm.cuny.edu (or mitvma.mit.edu, or some other
Bitnet/Internet gateway) and life is great!  It's a LOT faster than ucl
or ukc --- I get mail from my Sun to Internet sites in around a minute
and back in about the same.  If I mis-address something and it bounces
at, say, bco-multics.arpa (to quote a recent example) the longest step
in the loop is the fine-minute batching of local smtp traffic on our
ethernet.