🚀 go-pugleaf

>>>>> On 6 Mar 90 02:01:11 GMT, jessea@dynasys.UUCP (Jesse W. Asher) said:

 > [...]  The more I find out about this, the less convinced I am of the
 > greatness of domains.  Question: Why in the world would I want to have
 > mail sent to another site just so that site could send it to me?
 > If, for example, my domain is "dynasys.com", what is the advantage of
 > having my mail sent to the entity that takes care of the "com" domain
 > only to then be sent to me?  Especially when we have smart mailers that
 > will route the stuff directly to me.  After reading the RFC and asking
 > all these questions, domains do not seem to be the great thing that many
 > are making them out to be.  Comments?

This seems to be a misinterpretation of how the DNS MX record is handled.

The advantage here is that sites using DNS (we will, for the moment, ignore
UUCP pathalias/comp.mail.maps style routing) do a lookup, get an MX, then
send the mail *over the Internet* to that MX.

Example:  Bill Well's machine, twwells.com:

Script started on Tue Mar  6 06:38:59 1990
6:39am ckd@bass : ~ % nslookup
Default Server:  BU-PUB.BU.EDU
Address:  128.197.21.21
[...]
> twwells.com
Server:  uunet.uu.net
Address:  192.48.96.2

twwells.com     origin = uunet.UU.NET
        mail addr = postmaster.uunet.UU.NET
        serial=900228, refresh=432000, retry=3600, expire=864000, min=172800
twwells.com     server name = uunet.UU.NET
twwells.com     server name = seismo.CSS.GOV
twwells.com     preference = 200, mail exchanger = uunet.uu.net
uunet.UU.NET    inet address = 192.48.96.2
uunet.UU.NET    inet address = 137.39.1.2
seismo.CSS.GOV  inet address = 192.12.141.25
[...]
script done on Tue Mar  6 06:39:51 1990

The magic part is the line reading:
twwells.com     preference = 200, mail exchanger = uunet.uu.net

which means that my mailer will send mail for user@twwells.com to
uunet.uu.net through the Internet, and uunet can then arrange to get it to
you.  Otherwise, I might have to use twwells!user@uunet.uu.net, or
user%twwells.uucp@uunet.uu.net, or other strange and arcane mutterings,
just to get mail through to you.

Mail does not go to "the entity that takes care of the 'com' domain"
(namely nic.ddn.mil)--they just register your domain so nobody else gets
it.  (Imagine if Boston U, Brown U, and Bucknell U all used "bu.edu"...)

Naturally, NONE of this applies outside the DNS (in particular, none of
this applies to sites using comp.mail.maps for routing).
-- 
  Christopher Davis, BU SMG '90  <ckd@bu-pub.bu.edu> <smghy6c@buacca.bitnet>
   "Basic upshot - get your science straight, or start getting used to the
   taste of your Nikes." --Siobahn Morgan, thebang@blake.acs.washington.edu