--On Wednesday, 19 September, 2007 19:42 +0200 Eliot Lear
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Here our views of history differ. I can't say that I had a
> gray beard at the time, nor that I was at all involved in the
> design, but I was there, and I think there was something of a
> view that the whole point of MXes was for the MX relay to
> bridge between online and offline devices.
As well as to intermittently or poorly-connected Internet
devices (the notion of backup via a host that was more able to
dependably reach the destination was well-understood too).
> It was well
> understood at the time that MANY more systems were in fact on
> the networks that you mentioned than were on the ARPANET. And
> I would even argue that there MXes solved a major problem,
> which was that there was that sites that sat on both UUCP and
> the Internet often times Got It Wrong with regard to the
> precedence of "!". The abstraction that MX provided made
> relaying behavior much more explicit. I think this was
> understood at the time.
Very well understood by just about everyone involved, often by
everyone on both sides of the gateways. It is also the reason
why wild-card MXs ("route to this machine to reach all sites in
that university or country") were so important.
john
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