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From: jww@sdcsvax.UUCP (Joel West)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: Mail addressing and routing
Message-ID: <1040@sdcsvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-Aug-85 11:40:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcsvax.1040
Posted: Thu Aug 15 11:40:49 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 19-Aug-85 22:38:49 EDT
References: <644@adobe.UUCP> <5866@utzoo.UUCP>
Organization: CACI, Inc - Federal, La Jolla
Lines: 51

>In article <5866@utzoo.UUCP>, Henry Spencer writes
> This sort of idea has come up before.  The problem is that geography in
> general, and state boundaries in particular, has little to do with good
> routing.  The classic case, which I *think* has now been cleared up, is
> that for a long time there were two disjoint sets of machines in Colorado,
> with no in-state links between them.  Geography does show some correlation
> with routing, mostly because long-distance charges are tied to geography,
> but arbitrary groupings are hard to avoid if you want a solid basis for
> routing decisions.

Anyone of us who has thought about the problem and still likes geography
is aware of this distinction.  Many of my (gould9) best links are 
out-of-town, and for a while, all of them were.  I have no direct links 
to anywhere in usa.ca.n, but plenty to att.nj and usa.fl.

However, geographic domains have several advantages:
    1) They are unambiguous, clear, and indisputable.  
	   If I know henry is in Toronto, then I know his domain is "ON.CAN"
	   (or whatever).  I don't have to guess what his organization
	   is.  When he joins the net (if he's a new user) he doesn't
	   have to agonize over which domain to join and, in fact,
	   to domain headquarters (domainhq@cbosgd.IL.USA) will 
	   automatically grep and grok "Ontario" and spit out
		       ON.CAN
    2) In terms of reliability, geographic is as good as any.
	   Sure, there are some cases where geographic is
	   bad--I now would send to any Calif. AT&T site via ihnp4.
	   However, no scheme will be perfect and the choice
	   is really arbitrary.
    3) It keeps phone costs down.
	   When the net explosion hits, a lot of needless phone
	   calls out of state will eliminate the desireability
	   of UUCP at many sites.  Perhaps it will tend to encourage 
	   people to use more sensible routings rather than crossing 
	   the country three times.
    4) It will encourage more local ("free") connections.
	   People will tend to exchange connections with major sites
	   in their area.  I think this is a good thing.
    5) DOMAINS != ROUTES
	   As has been noted, domains are a logical address space,
	   and only imply routings for the dumbest of sites.  Almost
	   any site can replace "rmail" with something that goes
	   through a pathalias database.  Those paths will be
	   optimally routed for frequent correspondents.  If
	   an occasional message to an unknown site is confused by 
	   a misleading domain and takes a suboptimal route, so what?  
	   If it arrives, it's better than the present system.
	  
	Joel West	CACI, Inc. - Federal (c/o Gould CSD)
	{decvax!sdcsvax,ihnp4!bonnie}!gould9!joel
	gould9!joel@NOSC.ARPA