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Mailing Off Campus

Mail addressing is not the big mystery it is fabled to be. Sending mail to and from off-campus computers is as simple as mailing a letter home.

There are three main networks that connect the thousands of educational and research computer around the world. They are the Internet, UUCP, and BITNET. This article will discuss sending mail within the first two.

Internet

The most common network, Internet, is the simplest of all. Each computer on the network is registered with a database. This database is called a Name Server. When someone wishes to send something to a particular machine, the name server is asked for that machine's "Internet Address". This is a unique number that is analogous to the zip code in your home address. Therefore, all you need to supply to the mailer is the destination machine's name. If it is on the Internet, and registered with the name server, it will get there. (Baring any hardware problems, or natural disasters).

An example would be if your login is powerball and someone asked you for your E-mail address here at Purdue, you would respond: "My Internet address is powerball@ecn.purdue.edu." The reason you don't need to specify a machine name is that the name ecn.purdue.edu actually directs any incoming mail to a local machine that "sorts" the mail. It distributes the mail to your particular machine through the quickest path it can find.

UUCP

The other common network is UUCP. Unfortunately, the automated routing of the Internet is not as `invisible' on the UUCP. On a regular basis, all machines on the UUCP network receive a compiled list of every other machine on the network. This list contains hints about the easiest route to get from one machine to another. When someone mails a letter through UUCP, the mailer tries to look up the machine name in the list. If a machine name is found, a path to the recipient machine is generated and this information is tacked on to the message before it is forwarded. If no machine name is located, your message will bounce back to you with the information that the machine name could not be found.

So, if someone wishes to send mail to you through the UUCP network, you may tell them that your address is powerball!pur-ee. pur-ee is the name of the Electrical Engineering UUCP host. Since mail handlers read addresses backwards, you must specify the machine through which the incoming mail will travel (pur-ee) following the login name. Notice also that instead of an "@" symbol, UUCP uses the "!" to separate entries in the address.

To make a few general statements about mailing, we can say:

1. Whenever you tell someone your address, give them login@ecn.purdue.edu, the Internet address, or the UUCP address, login@pur-ee.
2. If you get mail from someone off campus and wish to send mail back to them, simply "replying" to their mail will work the best, especially with UUCP mail, instead of attempting to build a path yourself.
3. If you have a question about how to mail to a particular machine, and none of the above suggestions get the results that you want, see a consultant or your site specialist.

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