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From: johnsson@decwrl.DEC.COM (Richard Johnsson)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: decommissioning of nicknames
Message-ID: <5243@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: Tue, 9-Sep-86 14:40:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.5243
Posted: Tue Sep  9 14:40:15 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 10-Sep-86 01:35:11 EDT
References: <566@mecc.UUCP> <2502@cbosgd.UUCP> <3920@ut-ngp.UUCP> <3945@ut-ngp.UUCP> <3340@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: johnsson@decwrl.UUCP (Richard Johnsson)
Organization: DEC Western Software Lab, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 23

Chris Torek writes (among other things):

> In our case (host names), this centralised database does now exist;
> but it is going away: its doom was deemed long ago.

As I'm sure Chris knows, that centralized database is incomplete and growing
more so continuously. I have over 12,000 host names in the DEC.COM domain
that are not part of the centralized data, yet they are reachable by hosts
using the domain system (via MX records). I'll bet that I have duplicates
of many names you thought were unique. (I don't have a SEISMO, however :-)

As a matter of fact, the DEC network powers-that-be have decreed that the
list of hostnames is proprietary and I have been specifically told I cannot
make them public. (Don't flame me, I just work here.)

I've been planning to drop the unqualified names from our host table entries
for some time. As has been previously been pointed out, they have been
obsolete for a long time.
-- 
	Richard Johnsson, DEC Western Software Lab, Palo Alto, CA
	UUCP:  {decvax,ucbvax}!decwrl!johnsson
        ARPA:  johnsson@decwrl.dec.com     DEC ENet: rhea::johnsson
	phone: +1 415 853 6676