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Re: Message Routing Philosophy

2004-02-01 07:25:41

James Craig Burley <craig(_at_)jcb-sc(_dot_)com> writes:
So, at the dmail "layer", all connections are direct, and you could
say that "dmail messages go from one server to another with a very
concrete idea of where they came from and where they are headed".

But what are these dmail messages composed of, at the lower layers
doing the actual transport?

They're composed of *packets*.

This is exactly the point, isn't it?  The Internet provides a way to
route information from any part of the net to any other part, and so
it's a mistake to re-engineer that capability into the protocol layer
above.  AIUI it's in email because it was originally designed around a
UUCP-based network in which most connections are intermittent.

I wish that the IM2000 mailing list were publically archived
somewhere; I'd be very interested to know what's come out of that
discussion.
-- 
  __  Paul Crowley
\/ o\ sig(_at_)paul(_dot_)ciphergoth(_dot_)org
/\__/ http://www.ciphergoth.org/


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