Re: [GENERAL] Re: Oft Ask: How to contribute to PostgreSQL? - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

Louis-David Mitterrand wrote:
> On Wed, May 31, 2000 at 09:23:27PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > > 3. Mailing Lists.  We use software that allows us to use remote sites for
> > >    'mail relaying'.  Basically, instead of our central server having to
> > >    service *all* remote addresses, it offloads email onto remote servers
> > >    to do the distribution.  For intance, by dumping all email destined for
> > >    a subscribers in France to a server residing in France, the central
> > >    server has to send one email mesage "Across the pond", and let the
> > >    server in France handle the other servers.  If you are interested in
> > >    providing a relay point, email scrappy@hub.org (me) for details on how
> > >    to get setup for this.
> FWIW this not as good an idea as it seems. I know of many .fr domains
> that are hosted in the US. My own .ch is in St-Louis (MI), whereas some
> clients' .com are hosted right here in Paris.

.COM is not US dependant. Those servers in the USA really would be best served
in the .COM, .EDU, .NET, .ORG, .INT, or .US domain. The entire *point* of
geographically based names was to allow management the dns tree in a
geographic manner, so france could divide their own local tree as *they* chose,
and so domains which were following geographic practice would get reasonably
optimized DNS management. Servers which are *international* servers would
be best serviced if they used an international domain (all of the above
except for .us). This wasn't set up out of cultural ignorance or arrogance,
it was designed this way to facilitate management and DNS resolution.

That way, some .fr server in the us wouldn't be tying up international
lines every time a dns reload/refresh occurred, and a .us server wouldn't
be in france, doing the same thing...

Hmm...An intelligent algorythm for this mail could batch based on the
netblock of the MX, using the same logic systems as CIDR, and relay
messges into a mail relay server on that *provider* netblock, but
this might require more machines for relaying than we currently have
available, no?

> This setup is the reason I was unable to get {-hackers,-general} list
> traffic for a week because of a faulty "relay" for my Swiss .ch domain,
> which apparently refused to relay back to  the US where this domain
> lives.

A faulty relay caused a mail failure. That's standard mail routing. If you
had a faulty relay for your mail delivery in the .com domain (US), which
refused to relay go to your .ch domain, it would have been a problem
as well. Might I suggest to those who are setting up the reigonal/national
relays that they use multiple MX systems, so relay failures are managed
on the fly?

> Domains are diconnected from geography nowadays, and increasingly as
> we go.

Well, those who ignore the domain name system rfc's, and choose to try
to do it their *own* way, well, I guess they will be subjecting themselves
to more problems. Some domains never *were* geographic, some have been
the same since 1994.

Please read:
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1591.txt
For a clearer understanding of proper international dns domain usage
and TLD assignment.

http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1480.txt
Details how this is used in the USA, I assume the CCIT or somesuch
has similar guidelines for proper usage of .fr, and I am unaware
of the prober body to handle .ch server management.

-Ronabop

--
Brought to you from iBop the iMac, a MacOS, Win95, Win98, LinuxPPC machine,
which is currently in MacOS land.  Your bopping may vary.