Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Path: utzoo!telly!moore!sanwalk
From: sanwalk@moore.com (Roy Sanwalka)
Subject: Re: Finding an e-mail address (was: Maharishi Univ. e-mail address needed)
Message-ID: <1990Nov22.055936.19730@moore.com>
Summary: Don't assume UUCP 
Keywords: UUCP, Internet, host lookup 
Organization: University of Toronto, Computer Engineering 9T3
References: <43260@cci632.UUCP> <17041@netcom.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 22 Nov 90 05:59:36 GMT

     I hate to be the one to bring this up, but it seems that some people here
are assuming that we are all running UUCP on our local machines and keeping
complete (and up to date) copies of the maps.  THIS IS NOT ALWAYS TRUE!

     From experience, I can tell you that most large sites (eg. anywhere with
more than a couple of machines on a net) usually has one host set aside as the
mail server.  This eliminated the need to keep the UUCP maps on all of the
machines seperately, not to mention the Internet hosts table for Internet 
sites.  Also, this approach allows you to use more efficient methods for mail
transfer (SMTP over Ethernet) than UUCP.

     So, in order to locate a given place, this first thing to do is find
out which machine at your sites is the mail server.  Next, try using nslookup
if you're looking for an Internet site, as it is faster and more reliable
than the UUCP maps.  And lastly, try the maps if all else fails.

     That's all for now, "sportsfans"...


-- 
|     A. Roy Sanwalka   a.k.a.   sanwalk@ecf.{toronto.edu|utoronto.ca}     |
|   #include <std_disclaim.h>   sanwalk@moore.com, sanwalk@robohack.uucp   |
|          "Undergraduate Computer Engineer and Guru-in-training"          |
|   "People who think they know it all really annoy those of us who do!"   |
