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RE: Recipient is offline

2011-09-02 14:07:30



--On Friday, September 02, 2011 10:21 -0700 "Murray S.
Kucherawy" <msk(_at_)cloudmark(_dot_)com> wrote:

...
Twenty years ago, there were still a lot of part time
connections. There's nothing magic about SMTP as a way to get
mail from one host to another, and we had a variety of hacks
to get mail to them, from TURN to uucp to, in extreme cases,
magtapes sent by mail.  All the hacks are still available for
people who need them.  This isn't an SMTP problem.

I don't know why I didn't think of it before, but UUCP is
still available as an option, at least for FreeBSD, and
probably works just fine.  Expect funny looks when you tell
people you're using it, though...

So, to save Hector or others from writing a note, is Fidonet in
parts of the world where it is still useful.  BITNET mail is
pretty much gone, and there aren't a lot of nine-track tape
drives left around and in active use, but I had a mail
spool/queue/batch delivered via CDROM and an express carrier
less than a year ago.  If the alternative is not getting the
mail through in a reasonably timely way, I think we can all
learn to ignore the funny looks :-)

But that was exactly where the rules came from that an
intermediate relay, reached through a low-preference (high code
value) MX, needed to accept responsibility for the message but
were not required to deliver if via SMTP-over-TCP even if a
higher-preference MX was present.  If the operator of that relay
knows that some hack will get the mail to the delivery host more
efficiently than using SMTP-over-TCP, there are no 5321
restrictions on her taking advantage of that knowledge.

    john



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