Subject: routers, gateway

From: Imran Mohiuddin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 11:50:16 -0700

Is there anyway that I can trace a mail message using pine?  In other 
words I want to see what routers and gateways it has come throught to get 
to me?  If so, How do I do it?

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From: Ed Greshko <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1996 16:51:03 +0800 (GMT)

> to me?  If so, How do I do it?

	When you say "routers", if you mean the IP routers which control
network IP traffice....then the answer is, no.  That is because the
routers are operating at the network level and email is up in the
application level.

	If you want to see all the "hops" an email has taken then you
can go to config and  enable-full-header-cmd and then use the "h" key
to see the headers....which records the "hops".

	Regards,

		Ed

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Edward M. Greshko                       Technical Manager, Electronic Commerce
                                        Control Data Asia/Pacific Region
Voice: +886-2-715-2222 x287             6/F, 131 Nanking East Road, Section 3
FAX  : +886-2-712-9197                  Taipei, Taiwan R.O.C

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From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1996 10:36:20 +0100 (BST)

Whilst you can't trace the actual network routing devices, hubs and so
forth your message went through (which, to be honest, you probably don't
want to know anyway) you can probably get more information about any mail
relays/gateways the message went through...

Most of these add a "Received:" header line to the message as it goes
through them.  These stay with the message, and are included when it is
delivered into your INBOX.

However most mail progams, including Pine, suppress these extraneous
headers and just show you the standard ones.

You can see all of the headers by using Pine's "H" (full headers) command
when reading a message.

Note that this command is not normally available by default: you may need
to go into Pine's Setup Configuration screen first and select the
"enable-full-header-cmd".

Cheers,

Mike Brudenell                                         <[email-masked]>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Computing Service, University of York, Heslington, York, YO1 5DD, UK
Tel: +44-1904-433811  FAX: +44-1904-433740  http://www.york.ac.uk/~pmb1/

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From: [email-masked] (Thomas Ulich)
Date: 31 Jul 1996 13:27:24 GMT

Ed Greshko ([email-masked]) wrote:
: On Mon, 29 Jul 1996, Imran Mohiuddin wrote:
: > Is there anyway that I can trace a mail message using pine?  In other 
: > words I want to see what routers and gateways it has come throught to get 
: > to me?  If so, How do I do it?
: 	When you say "routers", if you mean the IP routers which control
: network IP traffice....then the answer is, no.  That is because the
: routers are operating at the network level and email is up in the
: application level.

Wrong, at least to some extend.

What you can do, is to look in the headers (press "H" etc, explained by 
others) for the name of the first machine in the header file, i.e. the
one mentioned at the end (seen from top of message), because the new 
machines are always prepended.  Then you go to your UNIX shell (this works
on SunOS, Solaris, Linux, and others (not so sure about which), and
issue the "traceroute" command.  Syntax is:

	traceroute machine.name

Replace machine.name with the correct one.  Example: My mails come from
"[email-masked]", so the first machine receiving my e-mail is 
"aurora.sgo.fi" and there's a line in the header saying:

	Received at (time, date) from (somewhere) by aurora.sgo.fi ...

Then you type:

	traceroute aurora.sgo.fi

and then you see, how a telnet, ftp, WWW, mail, whatever connection would 
be routed if you would open one.  It lists your own machine, then the
gateway of your site, then the receiving gateway etc etc etc up to the
host of the sender (provided it is not a modem line or something, the sender
must be on the internet.  Otherwise take the second machine in the list etc,
until you find the first computer with internet access, then trace that.

You get a moderately long list, depending how far away the machine is.  
Finland -> US takes typically some 12 to 17 jumps.  Traceroute also gives
you the response times of those nodes.

It might be, however, that the traceroute program is not installed on your
machine, because it does not come regularly with the OS, as far as I know.
And you cannot simply compile it and run it, because it needs to run "in the
name of root", because it required hardware access (for the timing) to the 
network adapter.  But then go and speak with your admin, he will probably have
it anyway, and tell you how to use it.

Have fun, and as an exercise: trace ME!	:-)
-- 
Thomas Ulich  NEW e-mail: [email-masked]  www: http://cc.oulu.fi/~thu/
 
      Inuit say:  He who looks long upon the aurora soon goes mad.

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From: Ed Greshko <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 31 Jul 1996 22:42:44 +0800 (GMT)

> issue the "traceroute" command.  Syntax is:

	If you recall....the original question stated:

	"using pine"

	So, I feel "wrong" is an improper conclusion.  Maybe you could
call it "incomplete".

[snip]

> Have fun, and as an exercise: trace ME!	:-)

	You may also wish to point out that it is possible to run 2
traceroutes (one after the other...or even at the same time) and get
2 different results.  This can happen if multiple routes exist in
a network.  And, we can even talk about the data traveling the network
in packets and the fact that one packet may travel one path and other
packets travel other paths and that they can get fragmented....

	Not only that....you may also have to give consideration to
the MX records which were returned....not to mention the randomness
of IP addresses returned when a destination host is multi-homed.

	So, sometimes, you can never be sure exactly what path
some of your packets may have traveled.  :-) :-)

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