Errors-to: owner-drums@CS.UTK.EDU
To: drums@CS.UTK.EDU
Subject: Re: getting started 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 31 May 1995 22:49:35 +0200."
             <199505312101.RAA25163@CS.UTK.EDU> 
Date: Thu, 01 Jun 1995 07:34:24 +1000
Message-Id: <850.801956064@munnari.OZ.AU>
From: Robert Elz <kre@munnari.oz.au>

    Date:        Wed, 31 May 1995 22:49:35 +0200
    From:        Eric Thomas <ERIC@SEARN.SUNET.SE>
    Message-ID:  <199505312101.RAA25163@CS.UTK.EDU>

    From the standards'  perspective, we're talking about  a simple technical
    impossibility. It is  technically impossible to gateway  Internet to most
    LAN mail products and follow all  the standards.

I doubt this is true.   It would simply be an unconventional
method (and would violate the "do not munge headers" rule,
that no-one takes much notice of, and doesn't apply to
gateways to non-internet mail anyway).

That is, the gateway just needs a database, all messages going
into the brain dead mail system have their From: lines totally
replaced, and now refer to magic-number@gateway.  Messages sent
to that address are inspected, if they are some kind of bounce
message, then the message is returned to the original rfc821
envelope address, if its a reply, the message is returned to
the original Reply-To, or From address.   Fortunately, bounce
messages from private mail systems are generally very easy to
detect, they tend to all follow a pretty standard form, for
fairly obvious reasons.

There are a bunch of issues to work out - when to clean up
the database, etc - plus users getting mail from the same
person over and over, with a different address each time, but
it is the kind of solution that will protect the internet, and
that's what internet gateways should install.

Long term, this really should become a non issue.  Even ignoring
the internet issues, even MS must eventually realise that their
mailer can't really cope with internal, purely MS mail based,
mailing lists, and send errors to the correct place - eventually
with e-mail becoming more and more a fact of life everywhere,
mail systems are going to have to get sensible functionality
(they also need it for X.400 gateways).

kre