Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 alpha 5/22/85; site cbosgd.UUCP
Path: utzoo!decvax!decwrl!pyramid!pesnta!amd!allegra!ulysses!cbosgd!mark
From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton)
Newsgroups: net.news.config
Subject: Re: Glacier becomes glacier
Message-ID: <1646@cbosgd.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 2-Dec-85 00:00:31 EST
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.1646
Posted: Mon Dec  2 00:00:31 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 2-Dec-85 21:55:11 EST
References: <1626@glacier.ARPA> <629@down.FUN> <794@umd5.UUCP> <113@hadron.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus, Oh
Lines: 48

In article <113@hadron.UUCP> jsdy@hadron.UUCP (Joseph S. D. Yao) writes:
>The only reasons to have multiple names for a machine are:
>(1) politics, (2) a bad technical implementation of name
>handling (that can't handle the "true" name of the machine),
>(3) politics, and (4) politics.

There is more to it than just politics.  One obvious problem is that
the "true" name of a host has to be unique, and this uniqueness implies
a fairly long name, like Glacier.Stanford.EDU.  To the locals, the machine
is no doubt just called "Glacier", and they view that as the "true name".
So partially qualified names are one good reason for a difference.

Another is nicknames.  The machine houxp.UUCP is locally called the
"purple machine", and the p in the name stands for purple.  Lots of
places have nicknames or even more local abbreviations like "A".

A third is that UNIX has yet to deal well with the notion of a machine
name.  System V has the notion of a "nodename", which is limited to 8
characters (6 or 7 in some contexts) and 4.2BSD is oriented toward a
single name like "glacier", both with the assumption that the higher levels
in the domain aren't included.  Heirarchical name spaces are still a
fairly new thing and the tools are a bit green.  The standards for
getting at such local names (which are critical) don't exist at all.

And then there is history.  At one time, the same machine at Berkeley
was known as "ucbvax" (on UUCP), "CSVAX" (on the Berknet), and "Ernie"
(spoken.)  It's only a feat of luck that it wasn't also the machine
known as "Berkeley" (on the ARPANET.)  For reasons of upward compatibility,
such names stick around for quite a while.

Which brings up another reasons: different gateways.  At one organization,
the gateway onto ARPANET may be a different machine from the gateway
onto UUCP which is different from the gateway onto BITNET.  While in
the ideal world the name of the gateway would have nothing to do with
the name of the domain, in practice domain and gateway names are often
chosen so the same name can apply to both the domain and the gateway,
witness "Berkeley" as a machine on the ARPANET and "titan.JUNET" as
the domain name for the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Finally, there is the question of whether "Glacier", "glacier", and
"GLACIER" are the same name.  In the ARPA world they are.  In the
UUCP world there is considerable pressure to use only lower case,
due to implementations that treat cases differently.  In the human
world at Stanford, the nice upper case first letter is important
for display purposes.  It is unfortunate that this issue even came up,
but it did.

	Mark