Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: New Host-Requirement RFCs
Message-ID: <1989Oct30.181039.25302@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1989Oct27.212939.11277@agate.berkeley.edu> <KARL.89Oct27222930@cheops.cis.ohio-state.edu> <89Oct27.235825edt.2687@neat.cs.toronto.edu> <1514@intercon.com> <1989Oct29.040104.17081@utzoo.uucp> <NELSON.89Oct29203312@image.clarkson.edu>
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 89 18:10:39 GMT

In article <NELSON.89Oct29203312@image.clarkson.edu> nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu writes:
>   >... If you want to use source routing, that means that you know
>   >more about delivering mail than your mail gateway.  This shows that your
>   >mail gateway is Really And Truly Broken...
>
>   No, it merely means that you know more than your gateway...
>
>But Henry, some of the local E-mail users have very few clues on how
>to force mail past Broken gateways.  They are all PhDs...
>...would be better served by working software.

The answer to how an ignorant PhD (a species I am familiar with) gets mail
to an unregistered host using strictly-conforming mail software without
asking for help is "he can't".  However, a sophisticated user, or someone
who has the sense to ask advice of a sophisticated user, can... if the
relevant gateway has the decency to admit its limitations and support %.

Everybody would be better served by working software; there is no doubt
about that.  However, the notion that "working software" will automatically
have complete and correct knowledge of every destination to which one might
want to send mail is simply wrong.  For the foreseeable future, there
will always be situations -- typically involving non-Internet sites --
in which the user knows more than the mailer does, and should be able
to exploit this information.
-- 
A bit of tolerance is worth a  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
megabyte of flaming.           | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
