Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!umcp-cs!israel From: israel@umcp-cs.UUCP (Bruce Israel) Newsgroups: net.mail Subject: Re: Domains: Multiple names OK? (Really, are domains good) Message-ID: <3437@umcp-cs.UUCP> Date: Sun, 14-Sep-86 16:30:08 EDT Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.3437 Posted: Sun Sep 14 16:30:08 1986 Date-Received: Sun, 14-Sep-86 23:40:24 EDT References: <566@mecc.UUCP> <2502@cbosgd.UUCP> <3920@ut-ngp.UUCP> <3044@columbia.UUCP> Reply-To: israel@umcp-cs.UUCP (Bruce Israel) Organization: Computer Sci. Dept, U of Maryland, College Park, MD Lines: 103 In article <3044@columbia.UUCP> metzger@heathcliff.columbia.edu.UUCP (Perry Metzger) writes: >The following message is a flame against people who think that >domains put too much strain on their minds. Anyone offended >by it is asked not to read further. Yeah, I'm offended by it. I feel that you are gratuitiously insulting people, instead of addressing (what I consider) to be legitimate points. >Poor guy. He had to use his mind a bit. And of course asking him to >make his own aliases for commonly used addresses in his .mailrc would >be too much of a strain on him. You can't alias a host, just an address! I tend to send mail thru seismo to various uucp addresses, so I can't alias strange-site!stranger-site!some-luser@seismo to being at seismo.css.gov since I don't know before hand all the UUCP addresses that I might use. And keep in mind that not every front-end mailer has a personal aliases feature. >It does seem like an insignificant effort, and I do type it on every >single address, whether an alternate still exists or not. Yeah, so do I, but that's because I'm knowledgeable about domains and mailers. I maintain the mail system here, and my rule of thumb for adding things to it is that our users should NOT have to become network experts to send mail. Do you think that everyone should remember all UUCP paths, also? After all, it's the same thing from a users point of view. site1!site2!site3!user is like saying to go to site3 which is in the domain of site2 which is in the domain of site1, which is a domain that we know of. Maybe we should get rid of pathalias also? >You never heard of GREP, have you. And the thought of trying >grep seismo /etc/hosts >never crossed your mind. This is not suprising. At any rate, I just tried >it, and it worked fine. It took 3 seconds. Again, you are assuming knowledgeable people. Many of the users here don't know about network files like /etc/hosts, and they shouldn't have to. It should be handled automatically. >>It would also help if the mailer >>on this and other machines would be able to handle a personal alias-list >>for sites, as well as for users. But then again, I'm not sure it can be >>called progress if NIC's removal of the nick-name SEISMO would result in >>every user adding SEISMO = SEISMO.CSS.GOV to the personal alias-list. > >1. Write a modification to your mailer, if you like. No one is stopping you. I have. I haven't added SEISMO = SEISMO.CSS.GOV to it yet, but I've considered it. However, asking 1000 busy sys admins to each modify their mail system to do something reasonable like this is a bit much, wouldn't you agree? If you don't agree, maybe DEC and IBM etc. should sell computers without OS's, and if you want to do anything special on your computer (like file system storage), then you can write your OS that does exactly what you want it to do! Now, don't interpret this message as a flame against domain-based addressing. I think all your points about why DBA is necessary and useful are valid ones (which is why I deleted those parts of the message without replying). My point is that you don't require extra complexity from users unless it's necessary. If there is only one SEISMO, then mail person@SEISMO should translate out to person@SEISMO.CSS.GOV. If there are more, then mail to that address should return an ambiguous address message, so that the user could more completely specify the address. Case in point: The University of Maryland mail system. I have it set up to work as follows: 'mail user' will go to the user on the current machine, if he exists. If not, it will go to the machine on our local network that the user's account is on. These tables are kept up to date automatically. The rationale is that users should not have to remember on which machine another local user lives. 'mail person@arpa-site' will go to the arpanet site. 'mail person@site.otherdomain', i.e. .bitnet, .csnet, etc. will be routed to a system that can route to the domain. Users need not remember what relays handle what domains. 'mail person@uucpsite' will expand uucpsite to the pathalias route, and go via that route. The idea is that if a person's mail addressing request is unambiguous, that request should be handled, and not subjected to unneccessary complexities. Enough necessary complexities are going to be added when converting the net to DBA with nameservers, without having to add complexities that aren't necessary. Bruce -- Bruce Israel University of Maryland, Computer Science Dept. {rlgvax,seismo}!umcp-cs!israel (Usenet) israel@Maryland (Arpanet)