Kaz Kylheku put forth on 9/14/2010 7:25 PM:

> Correct my misunderstanding, but mail routing would be
> if the "university" mail server also accepted mail for the
> "cs.university" domain, and passed it on to the right server, no?

There is only one domain, university.edu.  cs.university.edu is a host
on the network, not a sub domain of university.edu.  All mail is sent to
[email protected].  What the mailhub does is look at the user tables
to determine if a mailbox is local or on another university host.  In
the latter case, there will be an entry in /etc/aliases for each user
address that needs to be delivered to another host.  Here's a link
detailing how to do this in Postfix:

http://www.postfix.org/STANDARD_CONFIGURATION_README.html#local_network

Wietse uses the word "forward" in his how-to which I don't agree with.
In a purely technical mail delivery sense, the two words "routing" and
"forwarding" are interchangeable.  But in the practical sense, the
internet layperson has a distinct notion of what "forwarding" an email
is, and the same layperson will have never heard the term "mail
routing".  This is why I use these words distinctly and definitively.

Forwarding is:
[email protected] to [email protected]

Routing is:
[email protected] to [email protected]

In the case of forwarding, mail is being sent from one account at one
domain to another account at another domain.

In the case of routing, mail is being received for a user at a domain
mailhub host and routed to another host in the domain where his mailbox
is stored.  When this user sends mail to [email protected], it is submitted
to cs.university.edu which then relays it to the mailhub host, which
then relays it to the destination domain.  When this user sends an email
to [email protected], who is not in the CS department, the MTA on
cs.university.edu looks up the alias for jane.doe which points to
history.university.edu and routes the email to her mailbox on the
history dept server.  These examples are not "forwarding" of email, but
"routing" of email.

-- 
Stan
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