OT: Return-path question

[Green, Rodney]

/
/Hello,

I've been looking into how bounces are handled in SMTP. From what I 
read, the "return-path" header is what determines where a bounce is 
sent. I also read that bounces should
always be sent back to the originating SMTP server, regardless if the 
server is the MX for the domain of the sender or not. When I send a 
message to my home e-mail address and look
at the headers of the message after it is received, the return-path 
header is set as being the e-mail address I used to send the message. If 
my home e-mail address server happened to
run out of disk space after it received the message into it's queue and 
the return-path was set to the sender e-mail address, would the bounce 
be sent to the MX server for the sending domain
or would it somehow know to deliver it to the originating server, 
assuming the originating server is not an MX for the domain? I'm 
wondering if maybe the return-path doesn't get set to the
sender's e-mail address until it's actually delivered to the recipient's 
mailbox successfully.

Thanks for any info,
Rod








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