Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: registering UUCP sites
Message-ID: <12691@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 29 Nov 88 16:51:33 GMT
References: <1165@fig.bbn.com> <124@minya.UUCP> <1218@fig.bbn.com> <12649@steinmetz.ge.com> <372@eda.com>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 86

In article <372@eda.com> jim@eda.com (Jim Budler) writes:
| In article <12649@steinmetz.ge.com> davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes:

| |   Domains were intended to be a solution, not a religion. The idea that
| | some domains be formed to represent organizations is obvious; group all
| 
| They can't be a solution if people don't use them.

Look at your return addresses. Do they say ".UUCP"? People are using it,
I not only have no complaint with domains, I have been working on mail
problems here for two years, trying to get 500 (more or less) computers
with different vendors, operating systems, and physical connects to talk
to one another. I love domains, it's just that .UUCP works practically
as a domain, and I can't see trying to break it and forcing people to
convert their mailers, maps, user interfaces, mailing lists, forwarders,
and whatever else just because having a network be a domain offends
someone. It meets three criteria: there are gateways to other networks,
there is a naming athority (map project) and there is a standard way to
perform routing (maps, pathalias, smail).

| | [ paragraph trimmed here ]
| As much reason as there is to believe they cannot connect. This one paragraph
| is the reason I am responding to this posting. Why use that statement "for the
| gratification of the domain gurus" at all. Because they are trying to find a
| solution to a difficult problem, you talk about it as if they were working
| hard at the problem for their own jollies, not to solve a problem.

  Not a question of jollies, it's a question of trying to take a
workable solution (internet domains) and make it fit all cases, even
when some other form of domains is also workable. "When all you have is
a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

| And .uucp is an unworkable solution. It is world-wide in scope, therefore
| to pick a name, you have to search the world to make sure the name you pick
		       try "usenet maps" ^^^^^
| is unique.

I admit I'm a pragmatist; if it works it not unworkable.

| The point you miss is that the entire purpose of domains, whether
| organizational, or geographical, is to reduce the size of the area
| YOU have to search for uniqueness.

This is true, but is NOT the only intent of domains. They are supposed
to reduce or eliminate the host table concept, and to allow me to
reach a machine without having a complete route to it.

| Because, despite your arguments, .uucp could cease to work at a moments
| notice if the Internet decided to disallow it as they have threatened to
| in the past. The effect on you? Well you suddenly couldn't get mail
| to a lot of sites you used to get mail to, and they suddenly couldn't
| get mail to you, as they used to. 

  Interesting thought... if a site shows us as a gateway from internet
to .UUCP, and we are willing to act as a gateway, how does anyone make
it "cease to work?" Will we be thrown off the internet if we accept mail
for an unregistered domain?

| And one of the sites 'volunteering' to carry this traffic to YOU, even
| though you are not paying them a penny is the very site you accused
| of trying merely to increase their connect fees.

  I'm sorry you read it that way. Rereading it, I'm sorry I put it
quite that way. My point is not that any site is trying to get rich on
registration fees, but that users won't pay it because their mail works
without it. Large sites may well register and connect, but the guy in
his atic won't, not should he have to.

  As for paying fees, if you mean uunet, while I don't sign the check
we do, as an organization, pay substantial fees for their services, and
no one (particularly me) has been suggesting that they are not worth it
*to a commercial organization*.

  As long as .UUCP works, as long as there is a legitimate reason for
reaching sites addressed in that way, and as long as that is a domain
name in common use, I will support it both as an individual on the
machines I run personally, and as a needed service to insure prompt and
correct delivery of mail to serve the needs of the company for which I
work.

  I think we have beat this to death, but would be glad to continue the
discussion by mail if someone feels it waranted.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me