Was Forwarding; Now Domains

[MILLER@VAX.CAM.NBS.GOV]

Regarding forwarding mail:
Thanks for the indulgence and helpful suggestions.

         We've got
           1) a few Symbolics (7.2)  talking CHAOS & DNA.
	   2) a VAX (CAMVAX) running VMS (4.7) and Excelan's  TCP/IP(EXOS).
	   3) a VAX (ENH) running VMS and Wollengong TCP/IP. This machine is
	      `directly' connected to internet.
          [ Also a bunch of unix boxes ]
The suggestions from Chuck Fry and David Vinayak Wallace and obvious derivatives
(some of which I had already tried) were:
	a) user_name%host.domain@forwarding-host 
        b) EXOS%"user_name@host.domain"@forwarding_host
        c) <@forwarding_host:user_name@host.domain>
        d) <@forwarding_host:EXOS%"user_name@host.domain">
        e) <@forwarding_host:EXOS%user_name@host.domain>
These all fail for one reason or another; (in the interest of net-traffic; 
i'll email directly with anyone who wants details).  Basically they fail in
one of two ways: 1) the domain style address is seen by the DEC mailer who 
doesnt understand, 2) the address is seen by the EXOS daemon who *should* understand
but goes into loops, trashes the mailer and upsets the vax sysmanager.

My conclusion is the symbolics software is doing all it reasonably can do and I 
should give up trying to convince the EXOS daemon to behave.

More from chuck:
								  You also
  didn't say that your Lispm thought it was in a Dialnet-derived domain, when
  other hosts at your site use a real domain.  You may wish to change your
  Symbolics namespace to reflect the real domain name, since they're all
  (logically, at least) on the same piece of Ethernet.  

Does this make sense w/o TCP installed?

  As a Symbolics employee, of course I'd like to see you running IP-TCP (our
  name for it) on your Lispms; then you could send mail "directly" to the
  Internet.  

I agree; first thing next FY!!!!  Which leads me to wonder what experiences (and
suggestions) people have had setting up thier domains.  It seems weve got two main
options:
  1) making the symbolics part of CAM.NBS.GOV which is managed by a sun.
  2) making a new sub domain for the symbolics, eg. LML.CAM.NBS.GOV

With my limited knowledge (and no experience) it seems there are the following 
(dis)advantages
  1) - I must duplicate and maintain the domain info in the namespace. + `short' names for
all machines in CAM.NBS.GOV that are in namespace (can i even access machines
in CAM.NBS.GOV that are NOT in namespace?). 
  2) + namespace would automatically define domain info. - `long' names for all machines
in CAM.NBS.GOV. (Or can I still enter them in namespace?)

Ulitimately we will want NFS (FY91 ? :-) ?) [replies to my recent query about NFS
were quite convincing]; are there any considerations regarding
hosts whose file systems we want to cross-mount?

So, forgive my naivete, but has anyone got recommendations, advice or experience
with these choices? Am I missing anything?

Bruce Miller
MILLER@VAX.CAM.NBS.GOV