14 Aug
2024
14 Aug
'24
1:13 a.m.
arnold(a)skeeve.com wrote:
Clem Cole <clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
CSNet had a dialup POTS based service, PhoneNet, using MMDF. I think
that was Boston University's 4.2BSD VAX 11/780's primary email
connection until we got an Internet connection via Cypress(*) c. 1986,
initially using an 11/725 (a re-packaged 11/730), running, I think,
Ultrix.
Back in the day, global email was a maze of twisty passages with
gateways between the worlds of The ARPANET, BITNET, UUCP, CSNet, etc,
and which required excruciating navigation with percent signs used for
manual routing, tho sendmail configs would route user(a)host.BITNET etc
to the right gateway with the right incantation. Often, but not
always, a simple reply would work, but sometimes the rewrites didn't
get the sender address right...
(*) https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1565&context=cs…
Eric refers to that time as "the email
format of the week" and sendmail was
created to allow him to more easily handle the different formats. By then
there was the DARPA 733/822 format (user@host), Berknet (host:user), UUCP
(host1!host2...!hostn!user) being sources at UCB, as well as crap showing
up from the IBM Educational System, CSNET and various other places trying
be exchanged.
Small correction. CSNet didn't happen until the mid-80s, by which time
sendmail was firmly entrenched in the BSD world. Circa 1987/1988, I was
the Unix sysadmin at Emory U., and we got a CSNet connection via Georgia
Tech. It required a leased X.25 (!) line and a special board to put
in one of our Vaxen. There was a driver for it for 4.2BSD but we were
running 4.3. Ron Hutchins at GT and I ported it over to 4.3BSD.