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-
- ==Phrack Inc.==
-
- Volume Three, Issue 30, File #5 of 12
-
- ()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
- () ()
- () The DECWRL Mail Gateway ()
- () ()
- () by Dedicated Link ()
- () ()
- () September 20, 1989 ()
- () ()
- ()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()
-
-
- INTRODUCTION
-
- DECWRL is a mail gateway computer operated by Digital's Western Research
- Laboratory in Palo Alto, California. Its purpose is to support the interchange
- of electronic mail between Digital and the "outside world."
-
- DECWRL is connected to Digital's Easynet, and also to a number of different
- outside electronic mail networks. Digital users can send outside mail by
- sending to DECWRL::"outside-address", and digital users can also receive mail
- by having your correspondents route it through DECWRL. The details of incoming
- mail are more complex, and are discussed below.
-
- It is vitally important that Digital employees be good citizens of the networks
- to which we are connected. They depend on the integrity of our user community
- to ensure that tighter controls over the use of the gateway are not required.
- The most important rule is "no chain letters," but there are other rules
- depending on whether the connected network that you are using is commercial or
- non-commercial.
-
- The current traffic volume (September 1989) is about 10,000 mail messages per
- day and about 3,000 USENET messages per day. Gatewayed mail traffic has
- doubled every year since 1983. DECWRL is currently a Vax 8530 computer with 48
- megabytes of main memory, 2500 megabytes of disk space, 8 9600-baud (Telebit)
- modem ports, and various network connections. They will shortly be upgrading
- to a Vax 8650 system. They run Ultrix 3.0 as the base operating system.
-
-
- ADMINISTRATION
-
- The gateway has engineering staff, but no administrative or clerical staff.
- They work hard to keep it running, but they do not have the resources to answer
- telephone queries or provide tutorials in its use.
-
- They post periodic status reports to the USENET newsgroup dec.general. Various
- helpful people usually copy these reports to the VAXNOTES "gateways" conference
- within a day or two.
-
-
- HOW TO SEND MAIL
-
- DECWRL is connected to quite a number of different mail networks. If you were
- logged on directly to it, you could type addresses directly, e.g.
-
- To: strange!foreign!address.
-
- But since you are not logged on directly to the gateway, you must send mail so
- that when it arrives at the gateway, it will be sent as if that address had
- been typed locally.
-
-
- * Sending from VMS
-
- If you are a VMS user, you should use NMAIL, because VMS mail does not know how
- to requeue and retry mail when the network is congested or disconnected. From
- VMS, address your mail like this:
-
- To: nm%DECWRL::"strange!foreign!address"
-
- The quote characters (") are important, to make sure that VMS doesn't try to
- interpret strange!foreign!address itself. If you are typing such an address
- inside a mail program, it will work as advertised. If you are using DCL and
- typing directly to the command line, you should beware that DCL likes to remove
- quotes, so you will have to enclose the entire address in quotes, and then put
- two quotes in every place that one quote should appear in the address:
-
- $ mail test.msg "nm%DECWRL::""foreign!addr""" /subj="hello"
-
- Note the three quotes in a row after foreign!addr. The first two of them are
- doubled to produce a single quote in the address, and the third ends the
- address itself (balancing the quote in front of the nm%).
-
- Here are some typical outgoing mail addresses as used from a VMS system:
-
- To: nm%DECWRL::"lll-winkin!netsys!phrack" To:
- nm%DECWRL::"postmaster@msp.pnet.sc.edu" To:
- nm%DECWRL::"netsys!phrack@uunet.uu.net" To:
- nm%DECWRL::"phrackserv@CUNYVM.bitnet" To:
- nm%DECWRL::"Chris.Jones@f654.n987.z1.fidonet.org"
-
-
- * Sending from Ultrix
-
- If your Ultrix system has been configured for it, then you can, from your
- Ultrix system, just send directly to the foreign address, and the mail software
- will take care of all of the gateway routing for you. Most Ultrix systems in
- Corporate Research and in the Palo Alto cluster are configured this way.
-
- To find out whether your Ultrix system has been so configured, just try it and
- see what happens. If it doesn't work, you will receive notification almost
- instantly.
-
- NOTE: The Ultrix mail system is extremely flexible; it is almost
- completely configurable by the customer. While this is valuable to
- customers, it makes it very difficult to write global instructions for the
- use of Ultrix mailers, because it is possible that the local changes have
- produced something quite unlike the vendor-delivered mailer. One of the
- popular changes is to tinker with the meaning of quote characters (") in
- Ultrix addresses. Some systems consider that these two addresses are the
- same:
-
- site1!site2!user@host.dec.com
-
- and
-
- "site1!site2!user"@host.dec.com
-
- while others are configured so that one form will work and the other
- will not. All of these examples use the quotes. If you have trouble
- getting the examples to work, please try them again without the quotes.
- Perhaps your Ultrix system is interpreting the quotes differently.
-
- If your Ultrix system has an IP link to Palo Alto (type "/etc/ping
- decwrl.dec.com" to find out if it does), then you can route your mail to the
- gateway via IP. This has the advantage that your Ultrix mail headers will
- reach the gateway directly, instead of being translated into DECNET mail
- headers and then back into Ultrix at the other end. Do this as follows:
-
- To: "alien!address"@decwrl.dec.com
-
- The quotes are necessary only if the alien address contains a ! character, but
- they don't hurt if you use them unnecessarily. If the alien address contains
- an "@" character, you will need to change it into a "%" character. For
- example, to send via IP to joe@widget.org, you should address the mail
-
- To: "joe%widget.org"@decwrl.dec.com
-
- If your Ultrix system has only a DECNET link to Palo Alto, then you should
- address mail in much the same way that VMS users do, save that you should not
- put the nm% in front of the address:
-
- To: DECWRL::"strange!foreign!address"
-
- Here are some typical outgoing mail addresses as used from an Ultrix system
- that has IP access. Ultrix systems without IP access should use the same
- syntax as VMS users, except that the nm% at the front of the address should not
- be used.
-
- To: "lll-winken!netsys!phrack"@decwrl.dec.com To:
- "postmaster%msp.pnet.sc.edu"@decwrl.dec.com To:
- "phrackserv%CUNYVM.bitnet"@decwrl.dec.com To:
- "netsys!phrack%uunet.uu.net"@decwrl.dec.com To:
- "Chris.Jones@f654.n987.z1.fidonet.org"@decwrl.dec.com
-
-
- DETAILS OF USING OTHER NETWORKS
-
- All of the world's computer networks are connected together, more or less, so
- it is hard to draw exact boundaries between them. Precisely where the Internet
- ends and UUCP begins is a matter of interpretation.
-
- For purposes of sending mail, though, it is convenient to divide the network
- universe into these categories:
-
- Easynet Digital's internal DECNET network. Characterized by addresses
- of the form NODE::USER. Easynet can be used for commercial
- purposes.
-
- Internet A collection of networks including the old ARPAnet, the NSFnet,
- the CSnet, and others. Most international research,
- development, and educational organizations are connected in
- some fashion to the Internet. Characterized by addresses of
- the form user@site.subdomain.domain. The Internet itself
- cannot be used for commercial purposes.
-
- UUCP A very primitive network with no management, built with
- auto-dialers phoning one computer from another. Characterized
- by addresses of the form place1!place2!user. The UUCP network
- can be used for commercial purposes provided that none of the
- sites through which the message is routed objects to that.
-
- USENET Not a network at all, but a layer of software built on top of
- UUCP and Internet.
-
- BITNET An IBM-based network linking primarily educational sites.
- Digital users can send to BITNET as if it were part of
- Internet, but BITNET users need special instructions for
- reversing the process. BITNET cannot be used for commercial
- purposes.
-
- Fidonet A network of personal computers. I am unsure of the status of
- using Fidonet for commercial purposes, nor am I sure of its
- efficacy.
-
-
- DOMAINS AND DOMAIN ADDRESSING
-
- There is a particular network called "the Internet;" it is somewhat related to
- what used to be "the ARPAnet." The Internet style of addressing is flexible
- enough that people use it for addressing other networks as well, with the
- result that it is quite difficult to look at an address and tell just what
- network it is likely to traverse. But the phrase "Internet address" does not
- mean "mail address of some computer on the Internet" but rather "mail address
- in the style used by the Internet." Terminology is even further confused
- because the word "address" means one thing to people who build networks and
- something entirely different to people who use them. In this file an "address"
- is something like "mike@decwrl.dec.com" and not "192.1.24.177" (which is what
- network engineers would call an "internet address").
-
- The Internet naming scheme uses hierarchical domains, which despite their title
- are just a bookkeeping trick. It doesn't really matter whether you say
- NODE::USER or USER@NODE, but what happens when you connect two companies'
- networks together and they both have a node ANCHOR?? You must, somehow,
- specify which ANCHOR you mean. You could say ANCHOR.DEC::USER or
- DEC.ANCHOR::USER or USER@ANCHOR.DEC or USER@DEC.ANCHOR. The Internet
- convention is to say USER@ANCHOR.DEC, with the owner (DEC) after the name
- (ANCHOR).
-
- But there could be several different organizations named DEC. You could have
- Digital Equipment Corporation or Down East College or Disabled Education
- Committee. The technique that the Internet scheme uses to resolve conflicts
- like this is to have hierarchical domains. A normal domain isn't DEC or
- STANFORD, but DEC.COM (commercial) and STANFORD.EDU (educational). These
- domains can be further divided into ZK3.DEC.COM or CS.STANFORD.EDU. This
- doesn't resolve conflicts completely, though: both Central Michigan University
- and Carnegie-Mellon University could claim to be CMU.EDU. The rule is that the
- owner of the EDU domain gets to decide, just as the owner of the CMU.EDU gets
- to decide whether the Electrical Engineering department or the Elementary
- Education department gets subdomain EE.CMU.EDU.
-
- The domain scheme, while not perfect, is completely extensible. If you have
- two addresses that can potentially conflict, you can suffix some domain to the
- end of them, thereby making, say, decwrl.UUCP be somehow different from
- DECWRL.ENET.
-
- DECWRL's entire mail system is organized according to Internet domains, and in
- fact we handle all mail internally as if it were Internet mail. Incoming mail
- is converted into Internet mail, and then routed to the appropriate domain; if
- that domain requires some conversion, then the mail is converted to the
- requirements of the outbound domain as it passes through the gateway. For
- example, they put Easynet mail into the domain ENET.DEC.COM, and they put
- BITNET mail into the domain BITNET.
-
- The "top-level" domains supported by the DECWRL gateway are these:
-
- .EDU Educational institutions.COM Commercial institutions
- .GOV Government institutions .MIL Military institutions
- .ORG Various organizations .NET Network operations
- .BITNET The BITNET .MAILNET The MAILNET
- .?? 2-character country code for routing to other countries
- .OZ Part of the Australian (.AU) name space.
-
- 2-character country codes include UK (United Kingdom), FR (France), IT (Italy),
- CA (Canada), AU (Australia), etc. These are the standard ISO 2-character
- country codes.
-
-
- MAILING TO EASYNET
-
- To mail to user SPRINTER at node WASH (which is DECNET address WASH::SPRINTER),
- Internet mail should be addressed to sprinter@wash.enet.dec.com. Easynet
- addresses are not case-dependent; WASH and wash are the same node name and
- SPRINTER and sprinter are the same user name.
-
- Sites that are not directly connected to the Internet may have difficulty with
- Internet addresses like wash.enet.dec.com. They can send into the Easynet by
- explicitly routing the mail through DECWRL. From domain-based Internet
- mailers, the address would be sprinter%wash.enet@decwrl.dec.com. From UUCP
- mailers, the address would be decwrl!wash.enet!sprinter. Some Internet mailers
- require the form <@decwrl.dec.com:sprinter@wash.enet>. (This last form is the
- only technically correct form of explicit route, but very few Internet sites
- support it.)
-
- The DECWRL gateway also supports various obsolete forms of addressing that are
- left over from the past. In general they support obsolete address forms for
- two years after the change, and then remove it.
-
-
- MAILING TO DIGITAL ALL-IN-1 USERS
-
- Some Easynet users do not have a direct DECNET node address, but instead read
- their mail with All-in-1, which uses addresses of the form "Nate State @UCA".
- Here "UCA" is a Digital location code name. To route mail to such people, send
- to Nate.State@UCA.MTS.DEC.COM. Mail received from the All-in-1 mailer is
- unreplyable, and in fact unless the respondent tells you his return address in
- the body of the message, it is not normally possible even to puzzle out the
- return address by studying the message header. Mail from All-in-1 to Easynet
- passes through a gateway program that does not produce valid return addresses.
-
-
- MAILING TO THE INTERNET
-
- DECWRL's mailer is an Internet mailer, so to mail to an Internet site, just use
- its address. If you are having trouble determining the Internet address, you
- might find that the Ultrix host table /etc/hosts.txt is useful. If you can't
- find one anywhere else, there's one on DECWRL. See the comments above under
- "how to send mail" for details about making sure that the mail program you are
- using has correctly interpreted an address.
-
-
- MAILING TO UUCP
-
- UUCP mail is manually routed by the sender, using ! as the separator character.
- Thus, the address xxx!yyy!zzz!user means to dial machine xxx and relay to it
- the mail, with the destination address set to yyy!zzz!user. That machine in
- turn dials yyy, and the process repeats itself.
-
- To correctly address UUCP mail, you must know a working path through the UUCP
- network. The database is sufficiently chaotic that automatic routing does not
- work reliably (though many sites perform automatic routing anyhow). The
- information about UUCP connectivity is distributed in the USENET newsgroup
- comp.mail.maps; many sites collect this data and permit local queries of it.
-
- At the end of this file is a list of the UUCP nodes to which DECWRL currently
- has a working connection.
-
-
- MAILING TO USENET
-
- Usenet is not a network. It's a software layer, and it spans several networks.
- Many people say "Usenet" when they really mean UUCP. You can post a message to
- a Usenet newsgroup by mailing it to "name@usenet" at DECWRL. For example,
- mailing from VMS to this address:
-
- nm%DECWRL::"alt.cyberpunk@usenet"
-
- causes the mail message to be posted as an article to the Usenet newsgroup
- alt.cyberpunk. It is better to use Usenet software for posting articles, as
- more features are available that way, such as restricted distributions,
- crossposting, and cancellation of "wish I hadn't sent that" articles.
-
-
- MAILING TO BITNET
-
- Legend has it that the "BIT" in BITNET stands for "Because It's There" or
- "Because It's Time." It is a network consisting primarily of IBM computers. A
- native BITNET address is something like "OMAR at STANFORD", but when translated
- into our Internet format it becomes omar@stanford.bitnet. Once translated into
- Internet form, a BITNET address is used just like any other Internet address.
-
-
- MAILING TO FIDONET
-
- By comparison with the other linked networks, Fidonet has an addressing
- complexity bordering on the bizarre. The Fidonet people have provided me with
- this description:
-
- Each Fidonet node is a member of a "network," and may have subsidiary nodes
- called "point nodes." A typical Fido address is "1:987/654" or "987/654"; a
- typical Fido "point node" address is "1:987/654.32" or "987/654.32". This is
- zone 1, network 987, Fido (node) 654, "point node" 32. If the zone number is
- missing, assume it is zone 1. The zone number must be supplied in the outgoing
- message.
-
- To send a message to Chris Jones on Fidonet address 1:987/654, use the address
- Chris.Jones@f654.n987.z1.fidonet.org. To send a message to Mark Smith at
- Fidonet node 987/654.32, use address Mark.Smith@p32.f654.n987.z1.fidonet.org.
- Use them just like any other Internet address.
-
- Sometimes the return addresses on messages from Fidonet will look different.
- You may or may not be able to reply to them.
-
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-
- Appendix: List of UUCP Neighbor Sites
-
- This table shows most of the sites that DECWRL dials directly via UUCP. You
- may find it useful to help you construct a UUCP route to a particular
- destination. Those sites marked with "*" are major UUCP routing nodes. You
- should prefer UUCP routes that use these sites as the first hop from DECWRL.
- Case is significant in UUCP host names.
-
- 3comvax 3Com Corporation, Santa Clara, CA
- abvax Allen-Bradley Company, Highland Heights, OH
- acad Autodesk, Inc, Sausalito, CA
- adobe Adobe Systems Inc., Mountain View, CA
- alberta University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
- allegra AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ
- *amdahl Amdahl Corp., Sunnyvale, CA
- amdcad Advanced Micro Devices, Sunnyvale, CA
- ames NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, CA
- *apple Apple Computers, Cupertino, CA
- ardent Ardent Computer Corp., Sunnyvale, CA
- argosy MassPar Computer Corp., Sunnyvale, CA
- atha Athabasca University, Athabasca, Alberta, Canada
- athertn Atherton Technology, Sunnyvale, CA
- *att AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus, Ohio
- avsd Ampex Corporation, Redwood City, CA
- cae780 Tektronix Inc. (Santa Clara Field Office) Santa Clara, CA
- chip M/A-COM Government Systems, San Diego, CA
- claris Claris Corporation, Mountain View, CA
- daisy Daisy Systems, Mountain View, CA
- decuac DEC/Ultrix Applications Ctr, Landover, MD
- *decvax DEC/Ultrix Engineering, Nashua, NH
- dsinc Datacomp Systems, Inc, Huntington Valley, PA
- eda EDA Systems Inc., Santa Clara, CA
- emerald Emerald Systems Corp., San Diego, CA
- escd Evans and Sutherland Computer Division, Mountain View, CA
- esunix Evans and Sutherland Corp., Salt Lake City, UT
- fluke John Fluke Manufacturing, Everett, WA
- gryphon Trailing Edge Technology, Redondo Beach, CA
- handel Colorodo State Univ., CS Dept., Ft. Collins, CO
- hoptoad Nebula Consultants, San Francisco, CA
- *hplabs Hewlett Packard Research Labs, Palo Alto, CA
- ide Interactive Development Environments, San Francisco, CA
- idi Intelligent Decisions, Inc., San Jose, CA
- imagen Imagen Corp., Santa Clara, CA
- intelca Intel Corp., Santa Clara, CA
- limbo Intuitive Systems, Los Altos, CA
- logitech Logitech, Inc., Palo Alto, CA
- megatest Megatest Corp., San Jose, CA
- metaphor Metaphor Corp., Mountain View, CA
- microsoft Microsoft, Bellevue, WA
- mindcrf Mindcraft Corp., Palo Alto, CA
- mips MIPS Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
- mntgfx Mentor Graphics Corp., Beaverton, OR
- mordor Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Livermore, CA
- mtu Michigan Tech Univ., Houghton, MI
- mtxinu Mt. Xinu, Berkeley, CA
- nsc National Semiconductor Corp., Sunnyvale, CA
- oli-stl Olivetti Software Techn. Lab, Menlo Park, CA
- oracle Oracle Corp., Belmont, CA
- *pacbell Pacific Bell, San Ramon, CA
- parcplace Parc Place Systems, Palo Alto, CA
- purdue Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
- *pyramid Pyramid Technology Corporation, Mountain View, CA
- qubix Qubix Graphic Systems, San Jose, CA
- quintus Quintus Computer Systems, Mountain View, CA
- research AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ
- riacs Res.Inst. for Adv. Compu. Sci., Mountain View, CA
- rtech Relational Technology Inc., Alameda, CA
- sci Silicon Compilers, San Jose, CA
- sco Santa Cruz Operation, Santa Cruz, CA
- sequent Sequent Computer System, Inc., Beaverton, OR
- sgi Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
- shell Shell Development Corp., Houston, TX
- simpact Simpact Assoc., San Diego, CA
- sjsca4 Schlumberger Technologies, San Jose, CA
- sun Sun Microsystems, Mountain View, CA
- td2cad Intel Corp., Santa Clara, CA
- teraida Teradyne EDA Inc., Santa Clara, CA
- theta Process Software Inc., Wellesley, MA
- turtlevax CIMLINC, Inc, Palo Alto, CA
- *ucbvax University of California, Berkeley, CA
- utcsri Univ. of Toronto, Computer Science, Toronto, CA
- vlsisj VLSI Technology Inc., San Jose, CA
- wyse Wyse Technology, San Jose, CA
- zehntel Zehntel, Inc., Walnut Creek, CA
- _______________________________________________________________________________
-