Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mmintl.UUCP 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.