Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!athene!pcg From: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: More routing question information Message-ID: Date: 2 Jan 91 22:15:58 GMT References: <1990Dec29.182422.8788@kithrup.COM> <75110373@bfmny0.BFM.COM> Sender: aro@aber-cs.UUCP Followup-To: comp.mail.uucp Organization: Coleg Prifysgol Cymru Lines: 55 Nntp-Posting-Host: teachk In-reply-to: tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM's message of 31 Dec 90 03:26:02 GMT On 31 Dec 90 03:26:02 GMT, tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) said: tneff> In article tneff> pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes: pcg> [ ... kithrup has links to both SCO, a USENET site, and pcg> ucscc, which is an Internet site but has an UUCP link to pcg> kithrup, yet does not advertise itself as a USENET site or pcg> an Internet-USENET gateway ... ] tneff> Excuse me, but what in the world is an "Internet-USENET gateway"? tneff> Usenet is just a name for the set of computers worldwide that tneff> exchange Netnews (not mail), Ah yes, sorry for the imprecision; I have already received complaints by mail for the misuse. I misused USENET (knowing very well that it is strictly speaking the set of sites that carry certain News hierarchies, by whatever means), in the frequent colloquial/historical sense of "set of sistes that use the UUCP FTP to communicate, e.g. for mail transport". A lot of people use TCP/IP as synonym for Internet, when there are lots of TCP/IP networks that have nothing to do with it. Well, two wrongs do not one right make... tneff> I would not ordinarily object to casual misuse of the basic tneff> mail/news terminology, I am sorry about that, but frankly I cannot imagine any really good term. UUCP zone (the set of sites that appear in the maps produced by the UUCP mapping project of old, as far as I know) proably would have been more appropriate, but I was note sure that it is as popular. On the other hand the meaning attributed to USENET in my posting was clear, I hope. tneff> If there is some kind of mail gateway one is not supposed to set tneff> up, what IS it, actually? Well a UUCP zone/Internet gateway *can* be set up, e.g. ucscc, but the original poster wanted to *advertise* it as such in the maps, which should not be done without their knowledge. There is also the serious technical problem that there are *no* (RFC 976 -- if I remember well the number -- notwithstanding) standards for gatewaying from the Internet to any other different network, including Janet and the UUCP zone, and so there are loads of trouble. Not just the Internet lacks standards for gateways to other mail zones, I do not actually know of any other zone design that has them. All standard designers evidently assume that networks based on their standards are either entirely self contained or that different standards are 100% equivalent to one another, so that translation is always possible. Pah. -- Piercarlo Grandi | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber.cs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk