Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site cbosgd.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!harpo!eagle!mhuxl!houxm!ihnp4!cbosgd!mark
From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: Uniqueness of Names
Message-ID: <617@cbosgd.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-Nov-83 18:28:23 EST
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.617
Posted: Fri Nov 18 18:28:23 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Nov-83 00:12:28 EST
References: <107@shark.UUCP>, <1049@rocksvax.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus
Lines: 36

With current UUCP software, it's important for all names to be unique,
because UUCP assumes it.  If you are one of two sites named "foo" and
you call site "bar" which believes "foo" is the other one, they might
send you mail destined for their "foo" which happens to be queued up.

However, in the long term, 7 letters is not enough space to keep all
the names unique.  Several cases of non-unique names have been cited
here - interestingly enough, the Marx brothers were the first such case:
Bell Labs in Whippany got them first, and the University of California
at Davis was amazed when I told them they couldn't have them.

There's a much worse case nobody has noticed: the trend to name computers
after letters of the alphabet.  Computer centers are especially good at
this one.  They always have the A machine, the B machine, and so on.
The good news is that this leaves 6 letters to name the computer center,
so we have houxa (BTL Holmdel), ihuxa (BTL Indian Hill), ucb-cfoa (Berkeley),
(this one is, of course, botched, but they don't run uucp so it doesn't
matter), and so on.

The rule we're going to eventually have to settle on will probably look
something like this:

Your real name is a fully qualified domain, e.g. d.osg.cb.btl.uucp (we
name our machines after letters of the alphabet too) and that real name
is required to be unique in the world.  You also have a UUCP name (at
least as long as we still run UUCP) such as cbosgd.  The UUCP name might
convey less information than the full domain name, but it has to be
unique in the first 7 characters.

Each level in the domain tree has to have a person who makes sure that all
names in that domain are unique within the domain.  The top level will make
sure there are no other UUCP domains.  There will be someone appointed
keeper-of-the-books for UUCP that will make sure that nobody picks a name
that's already in use.  BTL will have another such person.  And so on.

	Mark Horton