Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site decuac.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!cbosgd!decuac!avolio
From: avolio@decuac.UUCP (Frederick M. Avolio)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: Name space explosion -- first tremors
Message-ID: <570@decuac.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 23-Jul-85 21:55:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: decuac.570
Posted: Tue Jul 23 21:55:57 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Jul-85 07:54:19 EDT
References: <568@decuac.UUCP> <531@down.FUN>
Organization: ULTRIX Applications Center, MD
Lines: 36
Summary: 10,00 hosts!?!?

In article <531@down.FUN>, honey@down.FUN (Peter Honeyman) writes:
> i don't have a problem with name collisions.  i use the (undocumented)
> private host declaration in pathalias to make such hosts invisible.
> pathalias then generates routes through but not to these hosts...
> 
> my database currently includes mod.map.uucp, arpa, csnet, bitnet, and
> dec enet (with mailnet coming soon).  that's about 10,000 hosts.  i

     One still then has to, by hand I guess, "fix" the collisions such
that if I want to send mail to Illinois, it does not try to go through
host osiris which exists in IL as well as at Johns Hopkins Univ
Hospital (local to us), for example.  Even if this is automated, how
do I indicate which is the "real" osiris, for example, for my site?
And why should I have to choose. (I may want to send to osiris in the
midwest sometime.)

     But, still... 10,000 names!  And between the time I send this and
someone reads this, 500 new personal computers have gotten hung off of
various hosts on the network. (80% of which are named something
unoriginal, like peanut or elrond...) If I know a user address is
user@d1.d2.d3.....dN.ATT.UUCP I don't have to know anything except the
best path to a site which handles whatever of the above domain mess I
"understand." (In this case, probably .ATT.UUCP.) Or if I know I want
to send to user joe on host joe on DEC's Enet, and I don't know how to
get to an Enet gateway, all I have to do is know to get it to a smart
UUCP host (smart being a well advertised host like seismo or cbosgd or
down or decuac or just one with a little larger picture of the world)
who will send it to decuac or decwrl.

     In this way *every* host can know how to get to at least one
"smarter" host.  And it is easy for *lots* of hosts to know paths to
100 other (some smarter) hosts.  But not many hosts will want to have
to keep current a list of 10? 20? 100 thousand node names.  And not
one host should or will have to.

-Fred