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From: ron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>)
Newsgroups: net.news.adm
Subject: Strange hostnames in USENET messages.
Message-ID: <378@brl-sem.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 27-Jul-86 23:12:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-sem.378
Posted: Sun Jul 27 23:12:42 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 28-Jul-86 05:02:29 EDT
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 17

In the last few weeks there have been an increasing number of people
using the top level Internet domain names as part of the hostnames in
the from lines and message-ids.  This is just fine except for the fact
that some of these people have no entry in the respective name servers
for these hosts.  If your address is going to end in .UK, .ARPA, etc...,
you must have at least an MX record for your host in Internet domain
servers.  If you don't, it is impossible to determine whether you are
reachable to the internet or not.  When you use .UUCP or .BITNET, it
is relatively obvious, and we know how to bounce things back, and we
can rewrite them in the USENET<->INTERNET gateways so they are legal
on the Internet side.  However, when you use something that is looks
like a valid Internet address, but isn't, no one can respond to it.

Prime offenders are certain hosts in the AC.UK domain and some wierd
host who claims to be pavepaw.ucb-arpa.arpa.

-Ron