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Path: utzoo!linus!allegra!eagle!mhuxl!ulysses!cbosgd!mark
From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton)
Newsgroups: net.news.config
Subject: Re: Two sites with the same name ?????
Message-ID: <882@cbosgd.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 27-Jan-84 19:13:42 EST
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.882
Posted: Fri Jan 27 19:13:42 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Jan-84 03:21:23 EST
References: <870@cbosgd.UUCP> <60@down.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus
Lines: 32


	How can there possibly be an "authority" that decides what uucp
	name you're allowed to give your machine?  If I pick a name the
	"authority" doesn't like, how is it going to stop me and my
	uucp neighbors from using it?  For purposes such as automatic
	mail routing it is convenient to think of the uucp network as
	having unique absolute names but in fact the naming convention
	is strictly relative.  The fact that there are two distinct
	sites named iuvax makes this obvious.

		Stephen C North

I'm sure you understand that the original UUCP software was designed
under the assumption that each site has a unique name.  The possibility
of two sites having the same name is not considered to be a "feature"
by more than a handful of way-out anarchists, as far as I know.
Most of us view it as a problem that will prevent mail from being
delivered properly.  (In fact, already mail sent to the VORTEX machine
on DECNET is being misdelivered to the vortex machine on UUCP.)

It seems obvious to me that the only way to prevent the problem from
reaching epidemic proportions is to create a central clearinghouse
that will prevent duplicate names from being assigned.

If you people at Princeton were to rename your university MIT, you
could communicate internally just fine using the name MIT.  You
might even get a few places nearby to call you MIT as well.  The
rest of the world would continue to call the university in Cambridge
MIT and ignore you (and send all your mail to Cambridge.)  The same
logic applies to UUCP.

	Mark Horton