Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!uunet!wuarchive!texbell!texsun!playroom!pitstop!lwake
From: lwake@pitstop.West.Sun.COM (Larry Wake)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: How do I find the domain of a friend?
Keywords: comp.mail.maps
Message-ID: <814@pitstop.West.Sun.COM>
Date: 16 Aug 89 22:24:12 GMT
References:  <5446@inco.UUCP> <477@antares.UUCP>
Reply-To: lwake@sun.com (Larry Wake)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc., Mountain View, CA.
Lines: 62

In article <477@antares.UUCP> dbilar@antares.UUCP (Dave Bilar) writes:
>In article <5446@inco.UUCP> mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack) writes:
>>In article  raulmill@usc.edu (Raul) writes:
>>>I have a friend who goes to another school (Cal State University,
>>>Northridge)
>
>>From UUCP map u.usa.ca.1:
>>    #N	csun.edu, csun
>>    #O	California State University, Northridge	(CSUN)
>>    #C	Larry Wake
>>    #E	postmaster@csun.edu
>[...]
>
>A quick scan
>of u.usa.ca.1[thru 10] for "csun" with your favorite editor is certainly
>called for.  If you search for your site's name, you may find a neighbor
>site which is already connected to csun.  Who knows?

Who knows, indeed...

Unless they haven't updated their map, you'll find that in fact the
closest site to USC with a UUCP link to CSUN is USC itself.  However,
this is *not* the best way to go about sending mail if you're at a site
that knows what it's about, such as USC.  Use domain routing!  As
previous articles suggested, your best bet is to send to addresses in
the form

    user@host.domain

where "user" is their user ID or alias, "host" is the machine name or a
name assigned to a group of machines, and "domain" is the domain name
assigned to the site (csun.edu, in the case of CSUN).  If your friend
has user ID "jane" on host "afws" at CSUN, her address is:

    jane@afws.csun.edu

In a perfect universe, you needn't worry about how it gets there; just
sit back and admire the network in all its glory.  In an imperfect
universe, yell and scream until it becomes perfect.  Eschew the "!" and
all it implies, for in that direction lies madness.

In fact, this is a particularly good example of Why Explicit Routing is
Bad.  If you indeed saw in the maps that usc connects to csun, and used
the bangpath, your mail would queue up until the next time csun called
usc (usc no longer ever initiates a UUCP call, even if outgoing mail is
queued), which might be in twenty minutes, or it might be in a day or
so.  If instead you used the domain address, the message would be
delivered over the Internet, usually within seconds.  (Unless
CERFnet/Los Nettos routing was munged, but that's certainly another
story for another time.)

BTW, to answer the original question "How do I find the domain of a
friend?", the best answer is "have the friend ask their local user
services group or system administrator."  Until such things become
automated and standardized, it doesn't make much sense to try to guess
someone's mail address from the outside when it's likely that your
friend can find out the answer much more quickly and accurately from
the inside.

Larry Wake
No longer postmaster@csun.edu, but still
keeping an eye on things from time to time.