BL>   Breaking in to a slanging match with Rod Speed...

Yeah, you know this is an open conference, and I'm sure some
other people can point out some of the glaring technical
innaccuracies in what Rod says without me having to do it
all.

 PE>> Squish is the thing that is taking an inbound packet, and
 PE>> routing any netmail not to 3:711/934 to 3:711/809.

 BL>   What does Squish do if it gets an obviousy silly address, or no
 BL> address at all? It must read message headers to get the destination
 
It is not possible to get "no address at all", the fields are
binary numbers.  The net + node are 16 bits.  Tell me which
combination of 16 bits represents "no address at all".  As for
silly, some people run with only Zone 3 nodelist to save space.
Squish can't even check in the nodelist to see if an address
is valid.  I just pass everything on to Dave Hatch.  Until it
gets to someone who can't route it somewhere else, it will
travel on it's merry way. 
 
 BL> net and node, and then get the point number out of TOPT: in the body
 BL> of the message.

 BL>   If "TOPT:" is missing, doesn't it just send it to the
net and node
 BL> in the header - ie, point zero?

Yes.

 BL>   Doesn't Squish do any checking of the net and node numbers in the
 BL> header, even blanks? Surely it would know a blank is not right, and
 BL> default to the net/node in the *packet* header?

How do you get a blank into a binary number?  A blank is represented
in ASCII as x'20', or decimal 32.  There is nothing wrong with
someone who wants to send mail to 1:32/32.

 BL>   Does the later version of qwk2pkt leave those fields blank, rather
 BL> than default to the home address 711 934?

The net and node are set to whatever you put in "To:", and
in the absence of that, the default is YOUR net and node,
which happen to be 711 and 934 respectively.  BFN.  Paul.
@EOT:

--- Mksmsg