From: ckd@eff.org (Christopher Davis)
Subject: Re: Mixed format addresses
Followup-To: comp.mail.misc
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation Tech Central
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 21:19:47 GMT

[watch the followups.]
WD> == Willard Dawson  <dawson@willard.UUCP>
BF> == fenner@postscript.cs.psu.edu (Bill Fenner)

 WD> In particular, I was referring to sites that want Internet
 WD> connectivity, and furthermore accept requests for UUCP connections
 WD> from those who cannot afford to be directly on the Internet, yet
 WD> refuse to accept that it is they (each and every sysadmin of each
 WD> and every Internet site), who should make email to and from their
 WD> UUCP friends WORK.

Every single UUCP neighbor of my site has a domain name.  In fact, a
couple of them aren't registered in the UUCP maps; they're just MXed,
and we translate between their UUCP name and domain name before sending
the mail out into the "rest of the world", so nobody should ever *care*
what their UUCP name is.

We do make email to them WORK.  I put a fair amount of time into getting
each one set up so that email to them WORKS.  The UUCP maps are not the
only way to get email to "WORK".

I do not feel that it is the responsibility of the rest of the Internet
to make sure that the sites I gateway for are reachable.  It's *my*
responsibility to see that they're properly registered as an MX record
in the DNS.

 BF> Yes, there are Internet sites which are configured improperly.
 BF> It's sometime hard to get things working well when many vendors
 BF> ship a 4-year old copy of sendmail.  That doesn't have much of
 BF> anything to do with the current discussi

 WD> It has everything to do with the discussion.  Reasoning for MX over
 WD> pathalias includes "it works so much better."  Does it really?  I
 WD> don't think so.  Why?  Because so many are using old, out-of-date
 WD> mail delivery software.

You know what?  They either fix it or lose out.  How many sites are
using old UUCP maps?  At least with MXes, if you fix your software once,
you're automatically "up to date".  People who have non-MX mailers can't
get mail to CompuServe, either (that one was a really useful way to get
some sites to upgrade their mailers).  Or AppleLink.

Heck, even Sun ships an MX-capable mailer with 4.x, and this is the same
company that took until 5.0 to put in the all-1s broadcast address...

 BF> Because the whole concept of the DNS was that everyone would get
 BF> registered, if only with an MX.  Since registration in the .US
 BF> domain is free and easy, a registering your own domain name is free
 BF> and slightly more difficult, there's no excuse for any UUCP-only
 BF> site not to have a domain name.

 WD> You'll NEVER have the case where EVERYONE is registered in MX.

True.  But those who aren't are already becoming an increasingly
marginalized fringe.  I have a .BITNET hack in my mailer configuration,
to punt to a local INTERBIT gateway.  I have a .UUCP hack, which punts
to a nearby friendly site that takes the time to keep the maps handy.
But I treat that part of the mailer configuration as the hack it is, in
place for user convenience; it's not worth the effort to maintain local
maps just to send mail to sites not in the DNS.

 WD> Even so, the MX system could soon be overwhelmed by the load of
 WD> systems joining one domain or another.  Perhaps I'll be proven
 WD> wrong.. but I don't see how this system of managing email routing
 WD> is any better (by itself) than pathalias in its management of
 WD> system resources or in its ability to properly route email.

It scales.  That's why it's better.  Do you really care that someone
added a leaf node in East Podunk?  Not unless you're sending them email.
So why do you have a map entry for them sent to you every month, stored
on your disk, run through pathalias, and ready for you to send email to
fredsvax, when you could just send mail to fred@fredsvax.podunk.nd.us,
do an MX lookup, and hand the message off to bigsun.cs.podunk.edu?  Is
it really worth the half-K of storage on your disk *just in case* you
want to mail Fred?  Especially since you can mail him without it?  What
if every adult in Podunk gets their own UUCP site?  Will you have a huge
u.usa.nd.* map file around, or would you rather look up the wildcard MX
for *.podunk.nd.us and send it to bigsun, which knows the difference
between fredsvax and bobsmac?

Remember, the DNS is a *distributed* database.  Only the domain servers
for a given domain have to have the data on hand; you only get what you
need, when you need it.  The 50-odd hosts within the eff.org domain
don't matter to *you* unless you're trying to send mail to one of them,
or ftp there; why should you have to have any data about them at all on
*your* disk?

 WD> Hence my earlier comments on an apparent lack of responsibility.
 WD> Internet sysadmins have not yet been convinced that proper routing
 WD> of email is a matter of responsible networking, or they would
 WD> surely take it upon themselves to set up sites (which already do
 WD> name service resolution) to also perform pathalias routing.
 WD> Software to do that is available, and is relatively easy to
 WD> configure...  What's the big deal?

Pathalias requires one to get the maps, store the maps, and process the
maps.  Care to send me an additional disk to put 'em on?  And some spare
CPU to run pathalias with?  Oh, and then tell me why I have to have the
main machine up to send you mail...because I'm not putting the UUCP maps
on my workstation.

I just got a full set of UUCP maps from ftp.uu.net as a discussion aid;
they total 7.5MB (as an uncompressed tar file, which at least limits the
losses due to disk block size wastage).  That's not counting the
pathalias results file.

The full set of DNS data is impossible to measure; suffice it to say
that it's huge (on the order of 1 million A records for directly
connected hosts, and a number of MXes, CNAMEs, HINFOs, and the like).

And you're saying the *DNS* won't scale properly?  The UUCP maps are
already showing signs of scalability problems (not least of which is the
namespace getting full; the extensible nature of the DNS tends to put
exhaustion a LONG way off).

Proper routing of email is a matter of responsible networking.  That's
why I make sure I have a mailer that honors MX records.  Routing to
non-DNS sites is a useful feature, so I implement it on the good graces
of some neighbor sites.

Getting in the DNS is available, free (for the .US domain), and only
requires an Internet-connected site willing to act as your forwarder.
Many sites currently in the UUCP Zone qualify.
--
Christopher K. Davis      | ``Usenet seems to run much like the Kif (or,
<ckd@eff.org>   EFF #14   |   for the TV generation, Klingon) high command.
System Administrator, EFF |   Whoever takes action and can be heard wins.''
+1 617 864 0665  [CKD1]   |   --Peter da Silva <peter@ferranti.com>
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc