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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: Mail Addressing [2 of 4] Semantics
Message-ID: <568@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 7-Aug-85 13:40:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: mmintl.568
Posted: Wed Aug  7 13:40:34 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 11-Aug-85 03:47:43 EDT
References: <9607@ucbvax.ARPA>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT
Lines: 35
Keywords: mail, addresses, semantics
Summary: Use routes to standard sites



I would like to propose a UUCP naming scheme which would be simple to
implement, yet deal with the need to supply a unique, unvarying address.
What I propose is to designate a few sites as "root" sites.  Your full
address is a route from any one root site to your host (and then to you).
The requirements to make this work are threefold:

1) The names of root sites must be reserved; no other site may be permitted
   to adopt such a name.

2) Each host must know how to deliver mail to a root site.  (This may mean
   requiring the user to prefix a route to the root site to the destination
   address with existing mailers.)

3) Each root site must know how to deliver mail to every other root site.

The only problem I see with these is how to designate the root sites.  I
suspect that about a dozen are sufficient, so this could be resolved in an
ad hoc manner.

Some caveats: I do not mean that mail should be forced to follow the implied
route specified by the address.  The point of this scheme is that "dumb"
mailers can follow a simple set of directions to forward mail, while "smart"
mailers can reroute mail without error.

I have not addressed the issues involved in cross-net mail here, either.
I have the impression that those problems are more syntactic than semantic.
Whether the items in an address represent machines or domain names does
not matter *for a mailer on another network*.  How they are presented does.


I believe that this scheme avoids the danger of a "takeover" of the net,
as well.  It would be relatively simple, if such were attempted, to
redesignate the root systems; all that is required is a check that their
names are not duplicated.