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From: leiner@RIACS.ARPA (Barry Leiner)
Newsgroups: net.mail.headers
Subject: Re: Mail Domain Names: Host table vs. Nameservers
Message-ID: <2610@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 30-Oct-85 12:03:19 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.2610
Posted: Wed Oct 30 12:03:19 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 1-Nov-85 02:32:31 EST
Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA
Lines: 33

Bill,

You have it basically correct. However, let me once again (see my note
of a few weeks ago) try to explain what is supposed to be happening.

1. ALL hosts on the internet have to be able to deal with domain style
names if they want to be able to talk with anyone else. Therefore,
there should not be a part of the internet that uses a host table and not full
domain names.

2. Hosts that rely on using the host table may not have the capability
of communications with all hosts (particularly some of those that rely
on host tables rather than domain servers). This is mainly due to
limitations of the host table paradigm and is the main reason for going
to domain servers in the first place.

3. The NIC is doing what they can to mitigate the effects of (2).
However, they clearly are not going to be successful in achieving full
capability between all hosts using domain servers and all hosts using
host tables. Therefore, once the "research" community has proven the
concept of domain servers, I would anticipate many if not most of the
remaining sites will switch to using domain servers.

4. In the meantime, users that are on hosts that rely on host tables
and that want to communicate with sites that are not in the host tables
really have no option other than to push their system
developer/maintainer to put in place domain nameserver capability.

Hope this helps.

Barry

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