Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!ucbvax!decwrl!palo-alto!vixie
From: vixie@palo-alto.DEC.COM (Paul Vixie)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: How to sign-up a host in the .US Domain.
Summary: one more thing
Message-ID: <3441@palo-alto.DEC.COM>
Date: 15 Jul 88 03:51:06 GMT
References: <8807141838.0.UUL1.3#948@Fernwood.MPK.CA.US>
Organization: DEC Western Research Lab
Lines: 49

In <8807141838.0.UUL1.3#948@Fernwood.MPK.CA.US> geoff@FERNWOOD.MPK.CA.US
(Geoff Goodfellow) writes:
# 2.  All hosts in the US Domain are of the form:  Hostname.City.STATE.US,
# i.e. Fernwood.MPK.CA.US  or  Lurker.Irvine.CA.US.  There is no standard for 
# "City".  Either pick your city's full name or make up a reasonable abbrev-
# iation of it (all future hosts in your city will be registered under it).

I've been working with Geoff to re-register my various personal machines in
the .US domain, and I wanted to add a few comments.

First, the city has to be a city.  I wanted domainname.ba.ca.us, since there
is a very old name called "ba" for the metropolitan area in which I live; I
thought it would be better to choose a name that would still be valid if I
were to move 20 feet and indicentally cross a city limit line.

No dice.  Neither Anne Westine (sp?) or Jon Postel has answered my plea,
which usually means I don't get what I want.  So I'll be moving vixie.UUCP
to vixie.sf.ca.us (unless I drop the "vixie"), and if I create a second
machine in my new house in Menlo Park it'll be xxxx.mpk.ca.us.  Not very
sensible, but I didn't make the rule.

Note that these names are _hostnames_ and not _domainnames_ in the eyes of
several people.  You may have trouble with machine.something.mpk.ca.us, and
you may not.  All your hosts go directly under the .city.state.US, according
to the present rules.  Even if I get "them" to go for .metro-area.state.US,
I don't know if they'll allow subdomains or not.  I think they want orgs big
enough to need more than one machine to continue to use .COM/.EDU/etc.

# R$*<@fernwood.mpk.ca.us>$*      $#uucp$@fernwood$:$1

Gotta love sendmail, right?

If subdomains are to be allowed or used, it'll have to be:

  R$*<@$*fernwood.mpk.ca.us>$*      $#uucp$@fernwood$:$1
       ^^ note

"at sign" followed by "0 or more tokens" followed by "fernwood.mpk.ca.us".
And note that the domain name should be passed into the mailer:

  R$*<@$*fernwood.mpk.ca.us>$*      $#uucp$@fernwood$:$1@$2fernwood.mpk.ca.us$3
                                                   note ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Fun fun fun.  Smail 3.2 will be out RSN, they say.  :-).
-- 
Paul Vixie
Digital Equipment Corporation	Work:  vixie@dec.com	Play:  paul@vixie.UUCP
Western Research Laboratory	 uunet!decwrl!vixie	   uunet!vixie!paul
Palo Alto, California, USA	  +1 415 853 6600	   +1 415 864 7013