Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!intercon!news From: amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Imminent death of UUCP Zone predicted Message-ID: <26A92ED4.4209@intercon.com> Date: 22 Jul 90 04:43:00 GMT References: <1990Jul16.202721.271@chinet.chi.il.us> <720@logicon.com> <1990Jul22.013945.4041@vmp.com> Sender: usenet@intercon.com (USENET The Magnificent) Reply-To: amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker) Organization: InterCon Systems Corporation, Herndon, VA Lines: 35 In article <720@logicon.com>, Makey@Logicon.COM (Jeff Makey) writes: > How do you know which is the appropriate host? Letting uunet handle > mail to unrecognized domains and unregistered hosts is nothing more > than a cop-out, as uunet must maintain the routing information that > you don't. It's not a cop-out. I don't *expect* anything but a domain address or a straight UUCP path to work, and I will not bother tracking down mail problems that involve anything but the first. However, if I see an address I can't route to, I will give uunet a crack at it, for two reasons: (a) If it's offsite, it's going to go through them anyway in our case. We are willing to pay a marginal amount to send randomly addressed mail off to them on the chance that it will work. It's not as if we only hand them mail that we can't route ourselves :-). (b) uunet is willing to take a crack at it. If uunet weren't a local phone call away, the "marginal amount" in (a) might become sufficiently large that we would only send mail that was a pure UUCP path starting with "uunet" or destined to a real-live top level DNS domain. If (b) changes, it's very little skin off our nose. "Not guaranteed" mail would just become "Not supported" mail until and unless the site in question got a domain name or gave us a full UUCP path. If uunet wants to be the Mail God, that's their business. One's enough, though... I see no reason to devote a significant amount of my resources to maintaining a model of the entire Usenet and affiliated networks, which is guaranteed to be inaccurate. -- Amanda Walker InterCon Systems Corporation