Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site down.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!mcvax!cbosgd!mhuxl!ulysses!princeton!down!honey From: honey@down.UUCP Newsgroups: net.mail Subject: domains: a view from bangland Message-ID: <65@down.UUCP> Date: Mon, 6-Feb-84 23:53:08 EST Article-I.D.: down.65 Posted: Mon Feb 6 23:53:08 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 2-Feb-84 00:51:30 EST Organization: Princeton Univ. EECS Lines: 40 Apparently-To: philabs!mcvax!rnews i was hacking pathalias tables the other day, messing around with the wjh12!bitnethost%user vs. psuvax!user@bitnethost.BITNET controversy. it wasn't that hard to solve -- i think it was something like BITNETDOMAIN = @{...}(DIRECT) BITNETSITES = {...}%(DIRECT) BITNET BITNETDOMAIN(0) psuvax .BITNET wjh12 BITNETSITES i treat BITNET exactly like a site name, which is consistent with my suspicion about domains: they are site names in disguise. for example, domainists talk about a domain registry, doing name serving or some other jargony thing. i don't know how a domainist views the concept of "BITNET-ness", but for me it suffices to conceive of whatever site does the trick for bitnet. (according to my tables, that's psuvax. and i don't lose sleep worrying how psuvax will handle mail to psuvax!BITNET!root.) with this view, domain-ing *is* just another way of routing (a view i took every opportunity to express in dc). BITNET is psuvax (or any site with a bitnet table), ARPA is any site that will gateway to arpaland, MILNET is ... etc. the only hassle is UUCP, where route tables are ad hoc. 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 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.) 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. peter honeyman