From: stanley@skyking.OCE.ORST.EDU (John Stanley)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Mixed format addresses
Date: 13 Dec 92 20:46:06 GMT
Article-I.D.: gaia.1gg7eeINNfve
Organization: Oregon State University, College of Oceanography
NNTP-Posting-Host: skyking.oce.orst.edu

In article <Bz4xxE.7M1@cs.psu.edu> fenner@postscript.cs.psu.edu (Bill Fenner) writes:
>In article <eBmLVB4w165w@willard.UUCP> dawson@willard.UUCP writes:
>If you want to look like part of the Internet, then get a domain name.  If
>you don't want to play by the (easy and free) rules, then don't complain
>that the game's no fun.

What easy and free rule says that UUCP sites have to look like part of
the Internet?

>|There ought to be a universally available (easily accessible to both UUCP
>|and Internet connected sites) means of determining which systems are willing
>|to provide gateway services between the Internet and the "UUCP-net".
>
>I'm not arguing that there shouldn't be.  I'm just saying that there
>isn't now [that I know of].  

Sigh.

>It's not the data in the UUCP maps - 3 of
>the 7 sites that I asked about their entries in d.Top responded.  Two
>said that the entry was deprecated cruft (one of them said he barely
>had any UUCP connections at all any more), 

Guess whose responsibility it is for notifying the uucp mapping project
that a map file is wrong? No, it isn't the uucp mapping project's. It is
the site who believes his entry in the file is "deprecated cruft".

>and one said they would route mail if I was a customer.

The same one who will route mail even if you aren't a customer.

>Not usually a
>problem with the DNS; since the DNS is a distributed database, you can
>be easily in charge of your little section, as opposed to having to
>mail your database updates to central site X.)

I can be in charge of my "little section" of the DNS? Really? From a
UUCP site? Just what protocol do YOU know of that will allow a UUCP
site to change the DNS records for its MX site? 

>With the UUCP maps, it's easy for
>automated unpacking systems to break, sysadmin doesn't notice, *poof*,
>you're using old data.

With the DNS, it is easy to poke incorrect data into the database and
*poof* EVERYONE is using bogus data. 

>|You'll NEVER have the case where EVERYONE is registered in MX.
>
>You mean the DNS.  Why not?  That was the original design goal.

For someone who is adamant that nothing in the UUCP maps could possibly
apply to Internet sites, why this sudden compulsion that MX records
must apply to UUCP sites?

>Using the DNS, I have no need to store any information about anyone on
>my computer; 

Really? 

>I can just look it up.  

And just, pray tell, if you keep no information about anyone in your
computer, who do you talk to to look it up?

>Using the UUCP maps, I have to keep
>6.7 megs of map files, and a 1.6 meg (33k line) paths file.  Which seems
>like the more desirable system?

Or you keep a <30 character name of a site that will gateway traffic.
That sounds most desirable.

>It makes no sense for an Internet-only site to run pathalias; the maps are
>of no use for them.  Therefore, the site must find a way from the Internet
>to UUCP.  The easiest way for it to do that is an MX record.

To do that reliably requires one MX record for every UUCP site. Passing
mail to a gateway requires knowing one address. The latter sure seems to
be much simpler than trying to get every UUCP in the world to register
in a voluntary database. It is, however, less simple that expecting them
to.
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,comp.mail.uucp