On Fri, 10 Feb 1995 17:55:07 EST Roger Fajman <[log in to unmask]> said:
 
>It  seems  to  me  that  there  could be  a  much  easier  way  to  tell
>LISTSERV-NJE what  to do with messages  that could be sent  by BITNET or
>the  Internet.  Rather  than  having   to  track  down  and  install  an
>unsupported  exit that  doesn't offer  all the  reasonable options,  how
>about some simple LISTSERV parameters  to handle the normal cases? Exits
>ought to be reserved for the unusual  cases. I would like to say what to
>do with Internet addresses in my own domain, Internet addresses in other
>domains,  and whether  to pay  attention to  the :interconnect  value in
>DOMAIN NAMES.
 
A few clarifications:
 
- If LISTSERV is properly configured,  your local domain's mail is always
  delivered locally. You don't need to use the exit for that. I think the
  problem is that  many sites were configured before  they were connected
  to BITNET. Thus,  they probably only have NJE addresses  in things like
  the LOCAL variable.
 
- LISTSERV doesn't  use DOMAIN NAMES  any longer, it uses  SERVICE NAMES.
  SERVICE NAMES  defines the  mapping between domains  and hosts  for the
  purposes of bulk delivery.
 
- The exit was indeed introduced  to solve special cases, before INTERBIT
  even  existed. DOMAIN  NAMES specified  a  number of  gateways for  the
  various domains. Then MCVAX was closed and INTERBIT was introduced, and
  DOMAIN NAMES was updated to reflect this. At the time, INTERBIT was the
  officially recommended way to deliver  Internet mail; the first version
  of SMTP on VM didn't support MX records, etc. When people started doing
  their  own  Internet  deliveries,  the  exit was  there  to  make  this
  possible. About a year ago (after the release of 1.8a, unfortunately) I
  added  support for  an "INTERBIT"  configuration option  that lets  you
  select the local host for such  deliveries. With version 1.8b, you will
  just  let USE_NJE  default to  0  and this  will activate  a number  of
  options to minimize  BITNET usage, including the use of  the local node
  for Internet deliveries by default.
 
  Eric