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!Rudy.Nedved@cmu-cs-a.ARPA From: Rudy.Nedved@cmu-cs-a.ARPA Newsgroups: net.mail.headers Subject: Re: Columbia usage of internet domain Message-ID: <2601@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Wed, 30-Oct-85 10:17:43 EST Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.2601 Posted: Wed Oct 30 10:17:43 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 1-Nov-85 02:07:16 EST Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA Lines: 25 Some significant points: 1) Yep, domain names are administrative and have nothing to do with networking. A name like CU20A.COLUMBAI.EDU does NOT mean it is on the ARPA Internet. 2) The BITNET RSCS mail files are nice but they are glorified fancy host tables. In the long run, some type of general gateway hack will have to be added or better yet an distributed database mechanism will be added since BITNET+Internet+UUCP+CSNET+MAILNET+etc. will be too much to keep updating and storing on every single BITNET site. 4) There is a domain transition going on so things are going to be rocky for a while. Some domains do not have sites listed in the old table, domain servers are inconsitent, confused and unreliable. Resolvers evaluate a name wrong and so forth. The problem with CU20A at the moment is that given you can not access it from the ARPA Internet, it should have an MF record for some host that will accept mail for CU20A. Also CCNet which is based on DECNet should probably have a CLASS of DN (DecNet) or something. Things are fuzzy. Hopefully when CHAOSNet and CSNET gets into the domain system, CCNet and BITNET will follow... -Rudy