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Posting-Version: version B 2.10 3/23/84; site cbosgd.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!eagle!mhuxl!ihnp4!cbosgd!mark
From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: Mail domain specification problem
Message-ID: <1222@cbosgd.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Apr-84 21:37:51 EST
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.1222
Posted: Wed Apr  4 21:37:51 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Apr-84 00:41:40 EST
References: <181@alberta.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus
Lines: 25

If you want your own top level domain, you have to meet certain
requirements placed by ARPA (see RFC881) such as providing a name
server and having a reasonably large number of hosts.  (This number
is not defined, but I am skeptical about whether 6 would qualify.)

If you do not want your own top level domain, you'll have to become
a subdomain of some other domain willing to take you on.  (The UUCP
domain may not be able or willing to do this, at least not in the
immediately forseeable future, because it isn't allowing subdomains
currently, and because you aren't reachable via a chain of !'s.  But
some other domain, like BITNET or the Canadian version of CSNET, might
be willing to.)  Becoming a subdomain means having dots on the right
hand side of the @ sign.

So you have two choices.  Either find some way to encode 822 addresses
(including your own) with a more complex string to the left of the @
for consumption of MTS, or else fixing MTS.  The latter is probably a
better idea, assuming MTS is more maleable than OS/360.

The issues of how to route your mail and what to name your subdomains
are entirely separate, although you have to have gateways smart enough
to do the appropriate transmogrifications between different conventions
when mail crosses convention boundaries.

	Mark Horton