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!cbosgd!mark From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) Newsgroups: net.news,net.mail Subject: Re: Is uppercase allowed in a site name on Usenet/Eunet? Message-ID: <1011@cbosgd.UUCP> Date: Fri, 24-Feb-84 15:46:32 EST Article-I.D.: cbosgd.1011 Posted: Fri Feb 24 15:46:32 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 25-Feb-84 07:57:11 EST References: <142@west44.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus Lines: 24 Upper or mixed case UUCP site names are discouraged. The reasons are that (1) 4.1BSD's delivermail squashes everything to lower case, and if the system is called Shasta, it won't be able to figure out where to send mail addressed to shasta; (2) people are easily confused and tend to reproduce case differences incorrectly; (3) RFC822 specifies that upper and lower case are supposed to be the same, that is, case is ignored in host names. There are some sites currently using upper case UUCP host names. Here is a list of those I know about: AT2a Ciprnet D1355 Fnatte-Vax GESS GLOBE GWII Glacier IM60 MAC001 NW1 ODA3B ODA3b Olympus PWB1 SW1A Shasta VisiVax WE9unix WIN All of these sites have trouble getting mail. There will shortly be a UUCP site name registry. The conventions it will allow are as follows: The first 6 characters must be unique lower case letters, digits, dash, and underline allowed In general, upper case may be used as long as measures are taken to ensure that the lower cased version of the name will also work. Such measures are quite difficult, so upper case is a bad idea. Mark Horton