Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!karl_kleinpaste From: karl_kleinpaste@cis.ohio-state.edu Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Paths and Precedence (Re: Question about From: lines) Message-ID: Date: 9 Jul 90 18:39:11 GMT References: <11034@alice.UUCP> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Organization: Ohio State Computer Science Lines: 170 ches@alice.uucp writes: [first quoting snoopy@sopwith:] > Keep it simple, stupid. Use bang paths. > [1] _That_Hideous_Name_, Rob Pike and P.J. Weinberger We try to, but there are a couple complications: Yes, there are. For example, _T_H_N_ is largely an excuse to complain without really addressing the _problem_, choosing instead to complain about particular bad implementations, at a time when bad implementations outnumbered good ones, at least at highly visible sites. (P&W spend quite some effort picking on CMU and Stanford.) This paper came up several times about a year ago, so I dug it out and posted a review of it then. Re-posting of that review follows. BTW, it is wonderful to give the users the following forms: bitnet!machine!user inet!machine!user csnet!machine!user etc. Much easier to teach, and the lay user can avoid the @/% jungle entirely. You have just returned to the land of transport-centric addressing. I'm really tired of having to know what network someone is using. With DNS, I don't have to. It's silly to have to tell your physical postmaster how to find your street -- s/he's just supposed to know that. Email should be treated similarly -- the user isn't supposed to have to know or care about how the bits get between here and there. You force them to know by encouraging network-specific address forms. Furthermore, if you actually tell people to use "csnet!..." then you're being redundant. Or so I understand, because it's supposedly the case that all CSNet members/customers have real DNS names now, which is to say that your use of "csnet!..." has been wholly subsumed into "inet!..." If/when BITNET sites ever accomplish full DNS registration, then "bitnet!..." will be similarly subsumed. The result will be a contentless "inet!" indication at the beginning of an address of the form "machine!user," and assuming that the machine name is an FQDN, it's of the form "f.q.d.n!user," which can be transformed to "user@f.q.d.n" with no loss of information; so the only remaining difference is in the choice of network punctuation and the ordering of the (host,user) pair. In other words, no semantic difference remains. I find it interesting to note that, in _T_H_N_, it is observed that !-paths "do not necessarily indicate transport," but your use of !-paths is _explicitly_ and _deliberately_ indicative of transport, via pseudomachine names instead of via choice of network punctuation schemes. You can indicate transport however you want, but it's clear that, as a practical matter if not a theoretical one, !-paths ultimately result in transport indications. Kinda silly. Last year's review posting follows. --karl ---------------- Path: triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu!karl From: karl@triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) Message-ID: Date: 31 May 89 10:34:52 Organization: OSU In-reply-to: honey@mailrus.cc.umich.edu's message of 31 May 89 01:25:16 GMT Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Domain Registration References: <1105@mailrus.cc.umich.edu> Distribution: na honey@mailrus.cc.umich.edu (peter honeyman) writes: pike and weinberger give some insights of a different nature in "the hideous name" (summer usenix, 1985, portland). I've seen this paper referenced two other times in the recent past, so I dug around in my files, pulled it out, and re-read it. My memory of it wasn't as bad as I feared (but not as good as I hoped, either). I am alternately impressed and irritated by this paper. On the one hand, a lot of excellent guidelines are (re-)introduced for naming schemes. However, a lot of trees were killed for the space in which to do what seems to me to be gratuitous mudslinging. There's a lot of discussion on filename representation, the evilness of VMS' use of no less than 6 punctuation characters and the problems of late-evaluated dynamic macros, as well as the problems in interpretation of Berkeley (actually, IBIS and [later?] berknet) conventions to use host:filename. When it jumps into the area of mail addressing, I think the bulk of the gratuitous bashing begins. In particular, the example addresses (These are given on the cover page and on page 4, and are research!ucbvax!@cmu-cs-pt.arpa:@CMU-ITC-LINUS:dave%CMU-ITC-LINUS@CMU-CS-PT and IJQ3SRA%UCLAMVS.BITNET%SU-LINDY@SU-CSLI.ARPA and yes, the first does include !@ and :@) are nothing more than pathological cases of something that was clearly broken from the outset. Not that the standard in question was broken, but that the mailers which generated these addresses did not (then) implement that standard. The moaning about the use of % as a pseudorouting punctuation character is nothing but moaning; it is not and has never been a part of anyone's standard, and I don't know of anyone who advertises it as advisable - I tell my users about it from time to time to get around temporary, transient difficulties regarding, e.g., nameserver blackouts and dead links. The same cannot be said for UUCP !-paths which are absolute until and unless one implements aggressive rerouting. I think we all know how well that goes over with The General Populace. There is also the general complaint that naming requires registration with a central authority. I consider this complaint vacuous. You can register with hostmaster@sri-nic.arpa, or you can register with uunet!uucpmap, take your pick. If you don't register with *someone*, mail is not going to get back to you, even if you can get mail sent out properly. Not many people are willing to put up with the need for manual tracking of UUCP connectivity to any serious extent, especially if one is prone to receiving mail from a wide variety of sources through gateways which do not even necessarily use bidirectional links[*]. In general, the domain naming system gets around the problem by hiding the issue of transport from the mail-writing user entirely, so that he no longer needs to worry about it in the least. I have to write a heck of a lot of mail, and without domains, it would border on the impossible. I don't care how it gets there, just so long as it does. There is further complaint that, "the gateway service between BITNET and ARPANET was made explicit," in the second example. Give me a break - tell it to the BITNET, OK? If they'd ever get their collective butts into gear, they would settle down to the task of registering hosts in the domain system properly somewhere (whether they do it at UUNET or the NIC, I don't care). Then I would be able to take out the morbid special case in my mailer where I detect .BITNET addresses and foist such mail onto a gateway system of which I know little. With proper use of the domain system, I don't have to know what network Joe Random is using, and I'm tired of complaints that .BITNET is abusing the network naming schemes. *When the standard is properly implemented,* it works well. Those who don't implement it have no one but themselves to blame for their inability to get between Here and There. All things considered, the closing complaint, "despite the words in the standard about hierarchy, the domain space is completely flat," is just a lot of nonsense. Consider, for one thing, that this paper was written when the standard which it so heavily abuses was really rather new, and there wasn't a whole lot done in the way of implementation yet. Now, 4 years later, there is considerable support available, ready-made and off-the-shelf. Plug it in and it goes - and the result is that now it's not flat. AT&Ters, the paper in question can be requested from the library as 11271-850508-05TM. --Karl [*] I run the archive machine osu-cis, which provides UUCP-accessible source archives to anyone who cares to call it, using an anonymous account. Execution of rmail is permitted in this area. We have had incidents where sites Out There Somewhere (I know not where, physically) have used osu-cis as their mail gateway to the Known Universe, with ensuing complaints directed at me from the recipients of such mail, wondering why mail can't get *back* the way it came. The answer is obvious, since we don't know about (in a UUCP Systems file sense) 99+% of the systems which use osu-cis. ---------------- -- There is nothing sweeter than the sound of ``Misty'' played on a cheap sousaphone. --Tom Fine