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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!kre
From: kre@ucbvax.ARPA (Robert Elz)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: Name space explosion -- first tremors
Message-ID: <9613@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 3-Aug-85 15:30:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.9613
Posted: Sat Aug  3 15:30:46 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 4-Aug-85 10:06:58 EDT
References: <568@decuac.UUCP> <531@down.FUN> <570@decuac.UUCP> <537@down.FUN> <548@down.FUN>
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 42
Summary: Authority to use names - how it works

In article <548@down.FUN>, honey@down.FUN (Peter Honeyman) writes:
> robert wants to know who will stop him from naming his machines
> allegra, ihnp4, decvax, etc.  indeed, naming computers after famous
> computers has a certain charm.
> 
> nonetheless, i presume you will be discouraged from doing so by the
> same people that stop me from calling my machine ucb-vax.berkeley.edu.

No no - that's exactly the difference.  There is some (one, two, three..)
fixed site that maintains the list of what are legal names in the "edu"
domain, another that looks after what is legal in the "berkeley" domain.

The whole rest of the universe believes names in those domains if and only
if those "registry" sites put them in their lists.

There is no equivalent in the uucp graph model (attributed names).
Data is collected from anyone and everyone, there is no authority
to determine whether my "decvax" is the real "decvax" of the one in
New Hampshire is.

Note, in neither case can anyone stop me calling my machine "decvax",
the difference is what mechanism is there for determining which of
them they should consider to be 'decvax'.

Of course, there's nothing stopping the uucp world banding together
and asking the uucp mapping project to delete (or simply not include)
duplicated names.  Then the world would only believe the uucp names
that they publish, and all would be fine.

Someday, someone might realize that its taking about a month to get
an answer from the uucp mappers as to whether their proposed name is
acceptable or not.  Being intelligent, they may just do a deal
with the mapping people - "I will call all my machines with names
that start with the prefix 'mit-', you reserve all names that look
like that for me, I will just allocate names for myself, and send you
the resulting list".

Does anyone see a pattern emerging?   Does it really make a difference
whether the naming scheme they agree to adopt is a "mit-" prefix, or
a ".mit" suffix?

Robert Elz				ucbvax!kre kre@monet.berkeley.edu