Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!brl-tgr!tgr!netinfo%jade@ucb-vax.ARPA From: netinfo%jade@ucb-vax.ARPA (Postmaster + BITINFO) Newsgroups: net.mail.headers Subject: Mail Domain Names: Host table vs. Nameservers Message-ID: <2593@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Wed, 30-Oct-85 05:18:22 EST Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.2593 Posted: Wed Oct 30 05:18:22 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 1-Nov-85 01:50:19 EST Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA Lines: 192 In reply to: From @MIT-MC.ARPA:GEOFF@SRI-CSL.ARPA Tue Oct 29 00:06:43 1985 Date: 28 Oct 1985 23:17-PST Sender: GEOFF@SRI-CSL.ARPA Subject: Re: Mail to UC Berkeley hosts From: the tty of Geoffrey S. GoodfellowCc: Header-People@MIT-MC.ARPA, MRC@SIMTEL20.ARPA Cc: Postmaster@UCBVAX Message-Id: <[SRI-CSL.ARPA]28-Oct-85 23:17:44.GEOFF> In-Reply-To: <8510282352.AA28981@ucbjade.Berkeley.Edu> First of all. Let's stop the shouting match. Shouting at me (postmaster@ucbjade) is not going to solve anything. I do not control the Internet gateway software at Berkeley, "postmaster@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU" does. netinfo@jade.berkeley.edu, that's dumb thinking. Sorry, but what is dumb? Certainly not full domain names which the Internet has been working towards for years. (Read the RFC's for more information.) Unfortunately, sites in the DARPA research community are caught in the middle. One side we are being told to use full domain names (which by the way we have been using within the BERKELEY.EDU mail domain for years while we have waited for the rest of the Internet to get their act together.) On the other hand, when UCBVAX switched to full domain names names as mandated in RFC 920 and RFC 921, we found that even though RFC 921 was published in October 1984, software developers did not meet the scheduled dates for implimentation of nameservers, and did not recognize the problems of having part of the Internet using the nameservers and part using host tables. Also sites have been slow in registering their new domain names. The DARPA research community's shift to full mail domain names is based on the following from RFC 921: 15 Jul 85 Implementation of the Domain Naming System Completed The goal is to complete the switch over to the domain style names and the use of the servers by this date. All programs that translate host name to Internet addresses should now use procedures based on the use of the domain style names system of resolvers and servers and the distributed data base. 15 Sep 85 Decommission Host Table At this point the master host table maintained by the NIC need no longer be complete for the DARPA research community. A full table of the DDN operational hosts will be maintained by the NIC. 15 Oct 85 DDN Plan for Domains Name Service The DDN PMO may establish a plan for the future support of name to address translations in the DDN community. Note the actions scheduled for 15 Jul 85 and 15 Sep 85. I interprete the actions that were scheduled to apply to all Internet mail hosts, not just the sites in the research community. For example, if the research community hosts are deleted from the master host table, how are other sites on the Internet going to know what they are unless they use a nameserver? My interpretation of the 15 Oct 85 was that this refers to MILNET and other non-research sites changing their names from @something.ARPA to @something.MIL, etc. Unfortunately, some non-research sites interprete this to mean that they do not have to switch over to using software that uses nameservers. Note that the issue of switching to using nameservers is separate from the issue of changing @something.ARPA to one of the new top domain name addresses. do you honestly expect every single user on the Internet to know about your local routing hacks thru user%host@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU or ...@Berkeley.EDU or ...Berkeley.ARPA?? Really!? You must be a newcomer to the net, for years UC Berkeley has been using the % hack and until recently, our "From:" line addresses had the format: . One solution for Berkeley, MIT, Columbia, and other sites having hosts in their mail domain is to go back to using the % kludge address, but this solution is in conflict with RFC 921 which call for a "complete the switch over to the domain style names". (See how the research sites are caught in the middle again.) heck, i couldn't even reply to your message because your ...@jade.berkeley.edu host isn't registered in the NIC. Foo! Now for a legal issue. The 26 research hosts out of 300 plus hosts at Berkeley that are registered are systems involved with ARPA grants or other computer science research. Most of the users on these systems are hopefully legal users of the US Defense Communications Agency Internet. Most of the users on other systems at Berkeley are not. Host administrators are suppose to restrict access to the USDCA Internet. How can we do that if we register all hosts at Berkeley in the Internet host table? The answer is (with current software) we can't. Nameservers offer a method of registering hosts as mail only sites and permit hosts which are in the local mail domain, but not on the physical Internet, to be addressed. The host table restricts the mail domain to hosts on the physical Internet. Even with nameservers we have a problem. At Berkeley, the Berkeley Internet is interconnected with the UCSF Internet. There are no "US Government Business Only" restrictions between these nets. We want full network services between these nets, but need to have mail only to other "government" nets. So we can even put them in the nameserver as mail only sites. I do not think anyone has come up with a solution to this problem yet. In fact, the domain naming scheme does not offer a solution for EDU sites. How do you determine which hosts we are to restrict access to. (Actual we do not want to restrict access but the only guidance I have seen is the DDN directory which says to restrict access.) Perhaps that policy should be rewriten identifying specific domains (eg. GOV, MIL) or specific nets (eg. MILNET). what do you think someone like Bob Kahn or some other money bags source on a MILNET host is going to do when he can't reply to messages originated by hosts like yours at UCB which isn't registed in the NIC's host tables (and doesn't know about your special address "hack")?? I am flustrated by not being to use an automatic reply feature too. Damn it, why don't you just register your hosts with the NIC and make it easy for yourself, your correspondents and the rest of the net?? See legal issue above. Of course I could ask the opposite question, why don't you switch to software that uses a nameserver as mandated by RFC 921? (No need to reply to that, I have already seen all the answers to that earlier in this discussion.) i seem to be gaining increased appreciation every day for SMTP servers on hosts which *reject* incoming mail from hosts they doesn't know about. SRI-CSL will join the ranks as soon as i field one question from a user on how do they reply to a message from one of your unknown hosts. ------- I think the Internet world needs to recognized that the Internet Mail world extends beyond the physical Internet. I think we can declare RFC 921 a failure and recognize that having part of the Internet using not using full domain names and a host table and the other half using full domain names and nameservers is not going to work. So it looks like it is back to % sign address kludges and "no progress" in the implimentation of distributed domain servers and full domain names until the whole internet starts using name servers. I think some practical ideas for how to test out the name server software with out a "complete shift" to full domain names is in order. Also a revision to RFC 921 is needed. Bill Wells postmaster%ucbjade@Berkeley.EDU PS. For those of you who want to do more reading about domains, is a list of references. ----------- RFC "Request for Comments" reports from the DDN Network Information Center, SRI International, Menlo Park, CA are available to Internet hosts by FTP from the ARPANET host SRI-NIC, and to CSNET members as either electronic messages or paper copies from the CSNET CIC . [1] RFC 822 "Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages", David H. Crocker, August 13, 1982. (Replaces RFC 733.) [2] RFC 920 "Domain Requirements", J. Postel, J. Reynolds, October 1984. This memo restates and refines the requirements on establishing a Domain first described in RFC-881. It adds considerable detail to that discussion, and introduces the limited set of top level domains. [3] RFC 921 "Domain Name System Implementation Schedule - Revised", Jon Postel, October 1984. (Updates RFC 897.) [4] RFC-881 "The Domain Names Plan and Schedule", J. Postel, November 1983. [5] RFC 882 "Domain Names - Concepts and Facilities", P. Mockapetris, November 1983. [6] RFC 883 "Domain Names - Implementation and Specification", P. Mockapetris, November 1983. [7] RFC 733 "Standard for the Format of ARPA Network Text Messages", David H. Crocker, John J. Vittal, Kenneth T. Progran, D. Austin Henderson, Jr., 21 November 1977. [8] 921ISO, "Codes for the Representation of Names of Countries", ISO-3166, International Standards Organization, May 1981.