Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ucbvax!ucdavis!lll-crg!seismo!brl-tgr!tgr!netinfo%ucbjade.ucb-vax.arpa@BRL.ARPA From: netinfo%ucbjade.ucb-vax.arpa@BRL.ARPA (Postmaster + BITINFO) Newsgroups: net.mail.headers Subject: Implementing Mail Domain Addresses and Nameservers Message-ID: <2162@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Wed, 16-Oct-85 02:30:55 EDT Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.2162 Posted: Wed Oct 16 02:30:55 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 18-Oct-85 20:04:57 EDT Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA Lines: 90 Would MAIL FROM:<@Berkeley.EDU:unknownhost.Berkeley.EDU> be an acceptable short term solution for mail sent from UC Berkeley? ----- Now, in reply to: Date: Fri 11 Oct 85 19:19:13-PDT From: Mark Crispin Cc: header-people@MIT-MC.ARPA Postal-Address: 725 Mariposa Ave. #103; Mountain View, CA 94041-1869 Phone: +1 (415) 968-1052 Message-Id: <12150399743.19.CRISPIN@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA> Rather than flaming about flaming, lets come up with some solutions. A centrally maintained host table is soon going to become to big to manage effectively. (At Berkeley we expect to have over 3000 "hosts" in the next couple of years.) So the Internet world is moving towards distributed nameservers. General working policy is that the experimental side of the Internet (the ARPANET backbone and friends) develops and debugs the system before it is adopted by the operational side of the Internet (the Milnet backbone and friends). This is the assumption of RFC 921 which planned for completion of the Domain Naming System by 15 July 1985 and decommissioning of the host tables for the DARPA research community (non-DDN) on 15 September 1985. Up to 15 Sep 85 we could have software that assumed the Internet mail system was one mail system. That is no longer true. Read the appropriate documents regarding the status of domains on the Milnet. I would not assume that the DARPA research community gets all the documents about the DDN. (Which documents by the way? DDN newsletter?) Domains have *not* been officially adopted as a naming registry that the entire Internet must use. I am not sure what you are trying to say here. Domain "host" names are being put in both the host table and nameservers for use by the entire Internet. So I must assume you are saying that domain nameservers are not currently operational on the DDN and implementation may, or may not be scheduled for the DDN. You can NOT go sending out headers with non-registered names to Milnet. Here is where we have a problem. First, lets change Milnet to all DDN operational nets and ask how a non-DDN site determines if a host is a DDN host. What about hosts that are on both a DDN net and on a DARPA research community net, how do you determine which type of address to send. The world is not simple anymore. Add another complication, with the implementation of domain name servers the Internet mail system now extends beyond the physical Internet. Second, according to RFC 921 on 15 Sep 85 "the master host table maintained by the NIC need no longer be complete for the DARPA research community. A full table of the DDN hosts will be maintained by the NIC." To me, that means that DARPA research community sites only need to register names of mail domains and their nameservers. Now if NIC deletes all non-DDN hosts from the host table used by a DDN host, how is that host going to know if the return mail domain is registered or not? Somewhere along the line, I think the Internet mail developers forgot to deal with this issue. ... while some part of the network is stuck with the host table as a registration authority the maintainers of software on that network have to continue to support that environment. True, within that part of the network, but not necessarily for the rest of the Internet. What if we follow the original plan and have two logical Internet mail systems, one using host tables and one using nameservers? Is the source routing kludge <@known-nameserver-domain-host:localmailbox@unknowndomain> sufficent, or do we implement Mail Transport Agents on "mail-bridge gateway" hosts that know about both sides of the Internet mail world? Bill Wells postmaster%ucbjade@Berkeley.EDU BITINFO@UCBJADE.BITNET <@Berkeley.EDU:postmaster@ucbjade.Berkeley.EDU> ??