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From: rlb@RIACS.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: RFC810
Message-ID: <16770@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 14-Feb-84 13:55:00 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.16770
Posted: Tue Feb 14 13:55:00 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 26-Mar-84 07:50:58 EST
Lines: 26

From:  Bob Brown <rlb@RIACS.ARPA>

The problem is simply that RFC 810 does not make explicit what are and
are not valid for cpu-type and opsys.  The "lexical grammar" section
only gives examples and they in no way imply that "<name>" is the
correct structure.

The two things to be concerned about are

	1) what syntax to use in forming entries to send to the NIC, and
	2) what syntax to handle properly in receiving host table
	   entries back from the NIC.

These need not be identical.  Notice that the BSD htable accepts
slashes and dots in host names.  This is fine.  We shouldn't run syntax
checkers on the NIC table just to have them break as they did a couple
weeks ago.  The rule-of-thumb to use is "be conservative in category 1"
and "be liberal in category 2".

In BRL's 68000 case, the error is in the second category above, hence
Berkeley's problem - fix htable to be more robust.

Bob Brown
RIACS/NASA Ames

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