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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!cord!hudson!bentley!ihnp1!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxr!ulysses!ucbvax!jordan
From: jordan@ucbvax.ARPA (Jordan Hayes)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: Name space explosion -- first tremors
Message-ID: <9512@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 31-Jul-85 14:59:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.9512
Posted: Wed Jul 31 14:59:05 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Aug-85 02:27:52 EDT
References: <9467@ucbvax.ARPA>
Reply-To: jordan@ucbvax.UUCP (Jordan Hayes)
Distribution: net
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 33


In article <9467@ucbvax.ARPA> kre@ucbvax.ARPA (Robert Elz) writes:
>If I am on "monet" a host at Berkeley, and I want to mail to "dali",
>another host, I can use "mail fred@dali" as the "dali" will be
>expanded to "dali.berkeley.edu" - the "berkeley.edu" being the
>domain from "monet.berkeley.edu".  Should a "dali" suddenly turn
>up at ucla, I can still address Berkeley's as "fred@dali", to
>get to the one at ucla I would need to use "fred@dali.ucla.edu"
>(or "fred@dali.ucla" - as the ".edu" can be appended from monet's

Well, there's a problem with that. What you describe *works*, but not
because of the "expansion" of the fred@dali to fred@dali.berkeley.edu...
How do you know what is the "local domain" ? How do you infer this?
It is possible for a host to be a member of more than one domain (with
valid addresses in each...). For instance, this machine could be
both ucb-vax.berkeley.edu and ucbvax.ucb.nca.uucp and either should
work correctly. Now, if i send to fred@ihnp4 (which has a 
direct link to ucbvax and thus should need no qualification), will
you expand ihnp4 to be ihnp4.berkeley.edu ? I hope not. UUCP
shows that you can have "peers" (i.e., direct connections) that are of
a different domain than you.

Also, fred@dali.ucla shouldn't work from here (you should need the
.edu, because it's a common *grand*parent we share, not a parent.
Do I need to know all the domains above me (i.e., purdue, mit, cmu,
ucla, etc...) ..? It would be nice to be able to cache this info
somehow, but i don't see how you can require me to know about all the
"aunts and uncles" that I have (at least in the UUCP world).

------------
Jordan Hayes        jordan@UCB-VAX.BERKELEY.EDU
UC Berkeley                       ucbvax!jordan
+1 (415) 835-8767    37' 52.29" N 122' 15.41" W