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From: gds@mit-eddie.UUCP (Greg Skinner)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: The truth about .UUCP
Message-ID: <5383@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 25-Sep-85 13:02:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.5383
Posted: Wed Sep 25 13:02:38 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Sep-85 05:04:08 EDT
References: <583@down.FUN> <10386@ucbvax.ARPA> <621@decuac.UUCP> <310@uwvax.UUCP> <593@down.FUN>
Organization: MIT Lusers and Hosers Inc., Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 28

Let us all back off from the issue of uucp routes vs. domain addressing
for a minute.

Domain addressing and uucp routing can coexist, just as domain
addressing and Internet routing coexist!  It is just a matter of
separating the transport agent, uucp, from the presentation agent, which
can be /bin/mail, sendmail, or what have you.

What is needed is an intelligent front end which can map from domain
names to uucp addresses, just as Internet names are mapped to Internet
addresses, and so forth.  Mail which is addressed on ucbvax to
honey@down.princeton (well, actually honey@down.princeton.uucp) can be
transformed to an equivalent uux command (or set of uux commands,
depending on whether or not ucbvax knows about princeton.uucp or not, if
it doesn't, a uux command will be made to the uucp nameserver, and so
forth).  This will keep non-domainists happy (they can continue to use
the raw uucp !-syntax) while domainists can feel free to use domain
addresses and have the front end convert them.

The key concept here is the layering, once we have separated mail
addresses from the transport mechanism we can make whatever syntax and
semantics we want.
-- 
It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under.

Greg Skinner (gregbo)
{decvax!genrad, allegra, ihnp4}!mit-eddie!gds
gds@mit-eddie.mit.edu