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- Path: sparky!uunet!ogicse!flop.ENGR.ORST.EDU!rutgers!spcvxb!terry
- From: terry@spcvxb.spc.edu (Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr.)
- Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
- Subject: Re: TALK command problem
- Message-ID: <1993Jan26.065944.5019@spcvxb.spc.edu>
- Date: 26 Jan 93 11:59:44 GMT
- Article-I.D.: spcvxb.1993Jan26.065944.5019
- References: <01GTWUKZCBNK000N1O@MSUS1.MSUS.EDU>
- Organization: St. Peter's College, US
- Lines: 63
-
- In article <01GTWUKZCBNK000N1O@MSUS1.MSUS.EDU>, TS117%BSU.DECNET@MSUS1.BITNET (Tandi Sunarto) writes:
- > This is strange to me, since I have no problem at all everytime
- > I send a mail to him, which means I could reach him.
- > I am calling from Bemidji State Univ., MN and my friend is at
- > University of Kentucky.
-
- You don't give the host names involved, nor the TCP/IP package you're using,
- but I can make a guess. Not everything you can send Internet mail to is really
- "on" the Internet. There is an Internet feature called "MX records" which de-
- fines a way to route mail to a host directly connected to the Internet which
- will then do "something" to get the mail to the desired host.
-
- If your TCP/IP supports the "NSLOOKUP" command or something similar, you can
- see this information for yourself:
-
- $ nslookup
- Default Server: spcvxc.spc.edu
- Address: 192.107.46.29
-
- > set type=a
- > hsh.com.
- Server: spcvxc.spc.edu
- Address: 192.107.46.29
-
- *** No address (A) records available for hsh.com.
- > set type=mx
- > hsh.com.
- Server: spcvxc.spc.edu
- Address: 192.107.46.29
-
- Non-authoritative answer:
- hsh.com preference = 200, mail exchanger = spcvxa.spc.edu
-
- [stuff deleted]
- > set type=a
- > spcvxz.spc.edu.
- Server: spcvxc.spc.edu
- Address: 192.107.46.29
-
- Name: spcvxz.spc.edu
- Address: 192.107.46.52
-
- > set type=mx
- > spcvxz.spc.edu.
- Server: spcvxc.spc.edu
- Address: 192.107.46.29
-
- spcvxz.spc.edu preference = 0, mail exchanger = spcvxa.spc.edu
- spcvxz.spc.edu preference = 10, mail exchanger = spcvxz.spc.edu
- spcvxa.spc.edu internet address = 192.107.46.27
- spcvxz.spc.edu internet address = 192.107.46.52
- > exit
-
- From this we can see that "hsh.com" is not "on" the Internet (since the
- query returned "No A records", however, a mail exchanger is defined, so you
- can send mail there. Compare that with "spcvxz.spc.edu", which has an A
- record, and also happens to have MX records.
-
- I suspect that the host you want to use TALK with is a MX-only host.
-
- Terry Kennedy Operations Manager, Academic Computing
- terry@spcvxa.bitnet St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA
- terry@spcvxa.spc.edu +1 201 915 9381
-