ARRL e-mail

[John Montague]

> I sent my log to contest at arrl.org  .  How do I know that it was correctly
> received ?

Internet mail has a significant weakness - there is no assured delivery.
Unfortunately, even if you know for sure that you used the right address,
you can not be sure that anything was received unless you receive a message
of acknowledgement from the addressee.  If you include a "Return-Receipt-To:"
header you might, depending on the destination node implementation receive
one or more automatically generated service messages that will tell you that
the "Acknowledging node" computer received some form of your message and did
something with it.  Sometimes the service message is generated by a gateway
or intemediate node (typical of Hewlett-Packard gateways) which then passes
your message on to some other node -- note you don't know if the destination
node actually received the message, and if it did you don't know if the 
addressee ever opened the message.  Sometimes the service message is generated
when the addressee opens the message -- but many company mail security measures 
cause addresses to be modified such that the "Receipt Message" can not be
routed back to you.

If a message is important, verify delivery through a manually generated 
acknowledgement from the addressee or by independent means (USPS, phone, ...).
FYI, SNA and some OSI networks do not suffer this flaw (robust protocols 
guarantee that either correct delivery has occurred or you are notified); some 
mail systems, e.g., cc:Mail, also have guaranteed delivery properties so long as
all mail is handled in the system's native mode (no gateways).

John Montague, W0RUE