user@unqualified

["Harold A. Miller" <hal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

John,

Regarding your comments on Neil Rickert's "user%unqualified@FQDN" setup:

If we are discussing the Recipient address (To, CC, ...), and barring any
tacit agreement (putting us into the "gateway" category you mentioned), I
agree with the "bounce and not guess" line.  However, I think what Neil is
saying here is much the same thing he and I (and numerous others) were
saying recently in the PP list: don't bounce a message because of  a "bad"
Sender address.

I'll exclude the gateway argument, as I think we agree there that a gateway's
job is to get stuff through in a properly addressed format for the next
network.

If I receive a message from user@unqualified, I want to send it on to the
valid (for purposes of discussion) recipient address.  In Steve Kille's
view it is more important to be able to return a Delivery Report than to
get this iteration of mail through, figuring people will fix rejected-stuff-
problems.  I agree that it is important to get DRs/replies/etc back, but not
at the expense of this piece of mail.  Therefore, I will construct a "source
route path", by writing the sender header as "user%unqualified"@site-I-got-it-
from, where that site is a FQDN (because my mail system ensures that it is
fully qualified--I'll leave off discussion of possible errors in my system).
It relies on the site I got it from to know how to go back from there, but if
it's doing the same thing, the "user@unqualified" that I got would have been
changed to "user%unqualified@site-they-got-it-from".  I don't think that's
too much to hope for, when we're talking about failures (bounces) and replies
only.  A bounce now will succeed/fail just as a bounce later, should it then
become necessary.  A failed reply will generate the administrator involvement
when it occurs, if it occurs.

My position is real simple: I want to get the mail through if possible.  Neil's
patch helps me to do that.

I'll try not to rehash this PP list debate any more!

HM
-----
 |Hal Miller, DIT, CSIRO, | Networking Environments Project               |
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