From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:UNKNOWN:G:wcwells
Newsgroups: net.followup
Title: UUCP Internet Addresses
Article-I.D.: populi.342
Posted: Sun Sep 19 09:11:14 1982
Received: Tue Sep 21 03:44:09 1982


Proposal for UUCP Network & Internet Addresses

Summary.

I believe the UUCP network can improve the way it handles mail by
establishing communications regions/areas.  Here are my suggestions for
UUCP addresses meeting the ARPA Internet standards.

Discussion.

The proposed adoption of the ARPA Internet formatted addresses by the
UUCP community (cbosgd!mark Fri Aug 20 10:26:18 1982) presents a number
of challenges.  The format suggested by Mark Horton "user@host.uucp"
requires the following to be implemented:

	1. A central registry of UUCP host names.
	2. No duplicate host names
	3. Each host must have a complete and
	   current list of UUCP host names
	   (and associated relative path
	   address).

>From what I have read on the USENET over the last several months, there
is no central registry for UUCP host names (through a few brave souls
are trying to compile a master list of UUCP host names).  We have
already had one or more sites joining the UUCP network with a duplicate
host name.  We do need to establish a central registry (or regional
registries) for UUCP host names if we are going to implement an
Internet type addressing scheme.

Micro computer (ie. floppy disk) hosts on UUCP have storage
restrictions which are not present in ARPA Internet hosts.
Maintaining a file of all host names (and their relative paths) is
fine for large machines (with plenty of disk space) but is not
feasible for small micros (with very limited floppy-disk space).
The way I see it, we have two solutions to help small micros on
the network, (a) establish mail service machines (with complete
host table files) to serve small machines, and/or break the UUCP
network into communication regions/areas so that the local machine
only needs to know about hosts in its local communications area
and how to send to other areas.

Proposal.

My first proposal is that we divide the UUCP community into regions
and areas within regions.

The advantages to dividing UUCP into regions are:

	1. We can divide the labour to maintain the host
	lists (ie. regional host lists can be managed by
	one person, or several - one for each region).
	2. Duplicate names are permitted (provided that
	they are unique within the local communications area.)
	3. The size of host list files need to be maintained
	at any one site can be reduced.  A host only needs to
	know about hosts in its local communications area
	and how to send to outside areas.
	4. Outgoing and relayed messages can be stored by
	the region of destination (a smaller directory to be
	searched for mail!).
	5. Gateways to and from other networks (eg. ARPANET
	could be established in the same region instead of
	half-way across the country. (No more need to send
	a message across the country to get it next door.)

On the other hand, to establish a regional system, we would
have to define communication regions and areas within regions.
And establish regular routes for transmissions between
regions and/or areas. (To some extent we are already defining
routes between regions.)


Communication Regions

Some possiblities that I have thought of for regions are time zones,
continents, and countries. I prefer times zones since they are directional
in nature (east-west) and can be specified with one letter if we
use military time zone designators. For example,

 Region	    Civilian	Zone Number	Military	Proposed 
 Name	    Time Zone	(delta GMT)	Time Zone	Domain Name

		GMT	0		Z		Z.UUCP

 Atlantic	AST	+4		Q		Q.UUCP
 Eastern	EST	+5		R		R.UUCP
 Central	CST	+6		S		S.UUCP
 Mountain	MST	+7		T		T.UUCP
 Pacific	PST	+8		U		U.UUCP

Communication Areas:

For communication areas I believe we should use
pre-established divisions such as political divisions, telephone area
codes, or postal codes. My personal preference is to use a combination
code with a two letter country code (standard military) and a two letter
state or province code (standard postal), for example, 'CA.US' for California,
USA,  'BC.CA' for British Columbia, Canada. Another possiblity, would
be to have a combination country and telephone area code. For example,
'US415' for the 415 area code (San Francisco CA), 'CA604' for the
604 area code (British Columbia, Canada). The latter might be a better
choice for UUCP since the UUCP network is primarily a telephone
network. However, the latter would mean a larger look-up table for
area to region expansion and requires the user to specify the telephone
area code for hosts outside his local area. The former requires state
codes be specified for out of state hosts. If you do not have a mail
service program to look-up full host names, then I believe it is
easier to remember the state a host is located in.

Using political divisions I come up with the following communication
areas for the Pacific (U.UUCP) region:

	Area			UUCP Area	UUCP Internet Domain 

	British Columbia	BC.CA		BC.CA.U.UUCP
	California		CA.US		CA.US.U.UUCP
	NW Mexico		NW.MX		NW.MX.U.UUCP
	Oregon			OR.US		OR.US.U.UUCP
	Washington		WA.US		WA.US.U.UUCP

Or using telephone area codes:

	Area Code		UUCP Area	UUCP Internet Domain

	 70 (NW Mexico)		MX70		MX70.U.UUCP
	206			US206		US206.U.UUCP
	209			US209		US209.U.UUCP
	213			US213		US213.U.UUCP
	408			US408		US408.U.UUCP
	415			US415		US415.U.UUCP
	503			US503		US503.U.UUCP
	509			US509		US509.U.UUCP
	604 (BC Canada)		CA604		CA604.U.UUCP
	702			US702		US702.U.UUCP
	707			US707		US707.U.UUCP
	714			US714		US714.U.UUCP
	805			US805		US805.U.UUCP
	916			US916		US916.U.UUCP

Take your chose. (Please send votes to ucbvax!g:wcwells, I will
tally and post results. Send comments and new ideas to net.followup)

Addresses specified by the user:

It should be noted that we can make addressing easier for the user
if we have mail programs that will expand the addresses as
needed so that the user only has to specify a partial domain
address, for example:

	g.wcwells@ucbvax		(same state & country  assumed)
	g.wcwells@ucbvax.ca		(same country assumed)
and	g.wcwells@ucbvax.ca.us		(UUCP area specified)

will all expand to the Internet address:

	g.wcwells@ucbvax.ca.us.u.uucp

or if we chose to go with area codes:

	g.wcwells@ucbvax		(same area code assumed)
and	g.wcwells@ucbvax.us415		(UUCP area specified)

will all expand to:

	g.wcwells@ucbvax.us415.u.uucp


If our mailing programs have a complete list of host names
then we can use the simplest form of the address, 

	user@host

and let the mail program expand the addresses.  Of course, with
duplicate host names you would have to include the area
name to distinguish between hosts:

	user@host.area

My second proposal is that we develop mail forwarding programs
in such a way that we can provide mail address expansion services
to micros when their messages pass through our larger minis.
[Since this message is getting to be a long one,
I will let someelse pick-up and run with this idea.]



COMMENTS?


Bill Wells
Computing Services, University of California, Berkeley CA 94720, USA
(415) 642-9801

ARPANET:	G.wcwells@BERKELEY
BITNET:		WCWELLS at UCBUNIXG
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UUCPNET:	ucbvax!g:wcwells