🚀 go-pugleaf

minor point (perhaps) but I believe that the correct Internet address for:

> yourpathtoames!ames!harvard!lhasa!postmaster 

would not be:

> postmaster@lhasa%harvard.harvard.edu 

but would be;

> postmaster%lhasa@harvard.harvard.edu 

As there has been some discussion recently about the "%" - I figured this was
a dandy of an excuse to explain my understanding of it (which comes from
stepping into the middle of a mail system with little background before hand,
and picking things up as fast as I can (i.e: I can't quote any RFC's for this
stuff)

The address "postmaster%lhasa@harvard.harvard.edu" basicly says:
-Deliver this mail to harvard.harvard.edu and let them deal with what is to
the left of the @ -- When it gets to harvard - *they* look at what is to the
left of the @ and find:  postmaster%lhasa -- I believe at this point there
are mechanisms for identifying this as an additional address to route to (as
opposed to a local address to deliver locally) and they change the "%" to an
"@" and send it to:  postmaster@lhasa -- (Now it is possible, that harvard
might be able to further understand that lhasa can be (must be?) reached
through UUCP - and maybe translates it to a bang address)

The point being, that in the Internet each sender is concerned only with what
is to the *right* of the "@" and each receiver must determine if they are
interested in what is to the *left* of the "@" - if what appears to the left
of the "@" is a local address to that machine/site - then it should
recognize it and deliver it as such - if it is another address, it dresses it
up appropriately (this might mean the simple translation of "%" to "@" - or
the translation of Internet to UUCP) - and sends it on it's way.

so something like the following might take the following "route"
(figuratively speaking):

[from A]userfoo%site.bar%site.baz%site.mumble@site.reach.able[to B]
[from B]userfoo%site.bar%site.baz@site.mumble[to C]
[from C]userfoo%site.bar@site.baz[to D]
[from D]userfoo@site.bar[to E]

Sorry if this is more confusing than helpful - the initial point though is
that the address should be:

postmaster%lhasa@harvard.harvard.edu

--fish