Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site cbosgd.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxl!cbosgd!mark From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) Newsgroups: net.mail Subject: Re: domains: a view from bangland Message-ID: <898@cbosgd.UUCP> Date: Tue, 31-Jan-84 13:48:30 EST Article-I.D.: cbosgd.898 Posted: Tue Jan 31 13:48:30 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 7-Feb-84 07:04:35 EST References: <65@down.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus Lines: 52 peter honeyman: With this view, domain-ing *is* just another way of routing (a view i took every opportunity to express in dc). There are indeed many similarities. The key difference is that routes are relative to the sender, domains are relative to the root of the tree, so your domain based address is always the same no matter where the sender is. And, of course, the delivery software need not traverse the exact path down the domain tree to get the message to you, there are often better ways to get it there. However, I'm unclear how this fact fits into what you're saying, I think it's similar. we now get into the whole domain naming farce (now playing in your nearest newsgroup). the geographical boundaries of domains are a red herring; the real issue is the quality of a registry's routing tables. so here's my proposal (in domainist notation): let's have a UUCP domain (what the heck), and invent a few other domains called HARPO, ULYSSES, LINUS, and the rest of the backbone sites, sites where mailaholics keep the quality of local tables high. (local means whatever you like -- we're talking operational view here -- a site is local if the path to it is known.) backbones then route mail through the various domains. This sounds amazingly similar to what we have in mind. The key difference is that, while the subdomains probably would be built around backbone sites, they would be given names like NJ (New Jersey) and NE (New England), rather than HARPO and LINUS, so that people would not have to change their published mailing addresses when a backbone site decided it was somebody elses turn. (The exact name is up to the subdomain to decide, of course, they would not have to be geographic like these examples. I tend to think in geographic terms, but there is no reason to restrict domains to a geographic organization.) (this should be recognizable as standard uucp routing; you'll forgive me if i say harpo!cbosgd!mark instead of mark@d.OSG.CB.ATT.HARPO.UUCP.) Where you've left off the uucp! from the front, much as people might like to leave off the .UUCP from the end of a domain address? The address uucp!harpo!cbosgd!mark looks a lot like mark@cbosgd.harpo.uucp, doesn't it? I hope that if you always type harpo!cbosgd!mark, you won't insist that your mailer route it through harpo even though there's a better link through allegra or directly (assuming it can be deterimined that the cbosgd is the same machine). i kidded a domainist in dc that the only way domains would take hold in the usenet world would be to integrate them into netnews. what i'm now proposing is that we take the best of usenet -- it's connectivity -- and build on that. Funny, there has been support in netnews for domains since last July. Of course, netnews is not a mail transport mechanism, so all it has to do is generate, preserve, and present domain addresses to the mail program, it isn't up to netnews to figure out how to get it there. Mark Horton