Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!snorkelwacker!bu.edu!orc!inews!iwarp.intel.com!psueea!parsely!twiki!dalew From: dalew@twiki.PDX.COM (Dale A. Weber) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Imminent death of UUCP Zone predicted Message-ID: Date: 29 Jun 90 05:58:05 GMT References: Organization: Experimenter's Anonymous - Portland, OR USA Lines: 91 karl_kleinpaste@cis.ohio-state.edu writes: > Horton, Auton, et al) since 1987. Five years is darn well plenty of > time to have expected people to have gotten registered. This is probably true, but unless one has an appropriate Internet Forwarder, one can't register a domain. > One of the first tasks which a new site should undertake when connecting > is to get such a domain name. And it's an easy, reasonably quick and > progressively better documented procedure. I certainly agree that any new site's SA should definitely _try_ to get a properly registered domain. Until recently, I wasn't able to do so because I could not find a local Internet Site that would provide the necessary forwarding. I found the folks down at orstcs very pleasant to work with and they told me they'd provide that service for my site. Unfortunately this is a long distance call for me with orstcs being in Corvalis, OR and I being in Portland. Finally, I went to uunet and have recently gotten my domain registered and am sharing it with several local sites, mostly personal systems. But, the connection to uunet still costs me. I don't mind the cost though because I gain more benefits from being connected to uunet than just having am Internet Forwarder. I'm sure that there are others that don't have access to any Internet sites local to them, or perhaps none that are willing to provide that service (as I found in my case). > A lot of sites have staff (e.g., me) who will happily do a bunch of the > legwork for such a site gratis, just for the sake of the improvement to > the domain space by annihilating yet another UUCP-centric name; and > UUNET and others will do it for a smallish fee. For those that are already subscribed to uunet, there is no charge to have them register your domain name for you and it's all taken care of via E-Mail quickly. But, the point is that until I decided to go to uunet I could not find a local or really low cost path to an Internet Site willing to provide that service (and I truely appreciate the kind folks at orstcs and am hoping to eventually be able to connect with them regularly). Some of us don't have large sites with budgets that can support calling L/D to our forwarders. My site accesses uunet through CompuServe's dial network at 2400 Bps and the cost is something I can live with. I could _not_ live with the long distance charges though and would not be able to afford to share the domain I registered if it were not for the existance of uunet and the very helpfull and responsive folks there. > It's an existence proof, and nothing more: You (the editorial "you," > meaning all ".uucp" site admins) haven't yet registered, and you've > had a bloody long time in which to do so; therefore I have no reason > to expect that you ever will unless forced. Please see above. Just because all of the existing .UUCP sites have had a long time to register, does not mean they are able to do so. I've run a UUCP capable site for just over a year now full time, and until just a couple months ago, I would not have been able to register a domain name. I knew of the existance of uunet, but until recently when I started asking questions, I had thought it cost a _lot_ of money to connect with uunet. It doesn't, and I hope that more SAs would consider talking to the folks at uunet if they don't have any local Internet sites, or such sites aren't willing to provide forwarding services. The cost isn't bad if you have a local CompuServe network dial-in number and don't mind 2400 Bps. It only costs me $35.00/month to maintain twiki's account with uunet and $5.00/hour for connect time which includes both CompuServe network time _and_ connect time to uunet itself - very reasonable and probably within reach of many more folks than might think so. > I have been tempted on several occasions to stop acknowledging the > pseudodomain .uucp much as I have been tempted to stop acknowledging > .bitnet. This would be wrong, for reasons I state above. > Note that I don't "sabotage" stuff.uucp in the sense you seem to mean. > I do rewrite such things from "somebody@stuff.uucp" to "stuff!somebody." > As far as I can see, the two are semantically equivalent. Only if your site talks to site 'stuff' though. If it doesn't then you need to leave the address alone unless you can find a proper path to get the mail to that site. The two are not equivalent at all. I've seen addresses like 'stuff!somebody@site.domain' bounce several times also. I don't worry about this so much since my site started talking to uunet though, because I know I can send mail to uunet addressed as 'site!user' and uunet will deal with it properly and get the mail to it's destination. I don't mean this as a flame. I just wanted to present some additional information that you and others may not have concidered. --- INTERNET: dalew@pdx.com OR dalew@twiki.pdx.com (Dale A. Weber) UUCP: ..!uunet!twiki!dalew OR ..!{sun!nosun, tektronix}!tessi!twiki!dalew BBS: +1(503)239-4960, 24 Hours, 1200/2400 Bps MNP 1-5, PCPable via ORPOR