Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!rochester!pt!andrew.cmu.edu!aad+
From: aad+@andrew.cmu.edu (Anthony A. Datri)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: Why @? (was NO NO NO NO NO, sort of)
Message-ID: 
Date: Sat, 11-Jul-87 11:37:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: andrew.MUxZimy00WAByBk08s
Posted: Sat Jul 11 11:37:23 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 13-Jul-87 01:20:34 EDT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon University
Lines: 17
In-Reply-To: <599@nonvon.UUCP>


These Nazi's are the us government, sort of.  Part of SRI, the NIC people
sort of administer the Arpanet.  Among other things, they put out all those
RFC's that everyone's been arguing about.

There are some machines, like the God-like seismo, that can figure out just
about any semi-reasonable way you have of addressing something.   For
instance, if you wanted to send me mail on my favorite PDP-10 over the
arpanet, you'd send to ad0r@tb.cc.cmu.edu.  However, some uucp sites don't
understand that, but they can use seismo!tb.cc.cmu.edu!ad0r and have it work
just fine.  To look at that address, you'd think that tb was a uucp machine,
when in fact this isn't really a terribly official path, but seismo gets the
idea.

The problem is that in the past the major networks were stayed pretty much
away from each other.  Now, as we get more and more machines,  and more and
more machines on more than one net, people are faced with the problem of
making their software compatible with everyone elses.