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From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Fidonet domain naming
Message-ID: <2020@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Mon, 20-Apr-87 05:05:03 EST
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.2020
Posted: Mon Apr 20 05:05:03 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 21-Apr-87 00:50:25 EST
References: <149@4gl.UUCP> <108@hobbes.UUCP> <1589@hplabsc.UUCP>
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 114
Xref: mnetor comp.mail.headers:183 comp.sys.ibm.pc:3415

This is actually pretty funny.  The uucp project has been pushing
little uucp hosts to register in made-up geographic domains because the
administrative burden is supposedly too high if they all use their real
names.  Now I am hearing the same people saying that we can't hook up a
geographically named network (FidoNET) to the domain system because it
ties the network geography to the name.  Instead, they want all 1500
FidoNET hosts to come up with (geographic?) domain names and register
them (for $20/yr apiece?  Hmm, $30K/yr for the registry may be the
motivation here).  We're trying to build a gateway, not an empire.

From: gore@nucsrl.UUCP (Jacob Gore)
> The whole beauty of Internet addresses (as I see it) is that they hide the
> networking details...
From: fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair)
> I agree wholeheartedly, however, the other people working on the
> gateway software don't agree with me.

What makes Internet domain addresses better than what they replaced is
that ROUTING is not implied by the address.  With uucp addresses, you
needed to specify a route through unrelated machines.  We had to fix that
before our addresses could be used by Internet mailers.  This is not true
with FidoNET; they already have a geographic, hierarchical, fully-qualified
naming system, with auto routing, in place.

What's wrong with grafting their naming system into the domain tree?  If
the domain administrators are sufficiently inflexible that they want
all other organizations to restructure their name spaces just so they
can connect up, it strikes me that the domain concept and/or administrators
don't have enough flexibility for the REAL job we are trying to do --
make all the email systems interoperate.

I can see that hosts which use multiple networks (at once, or over a
long period of time) might want to have domain names without a network
name in them.  Nothing we are doing prevents FidoNET nodes from
registering like anybody else; in fact, we are *enabling* them to do so
by building gateways to the domain system.  But we want to preserve
connectivity to the sites that have no need to register because they
aren't on multiple networks and probably never will be.

From: david@ukma.UUCP
> The .net domains are supposed to be for the control centers of
> other networks.  The only machines under .cs.net are those at
> the csnet-relay site.  No others.
From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP
>                                                  The NIC is strongly
> opposed to physical network based domains like user@host.UUCP and
> user@host.ARPA.  Since user@host.FIDO.NET is just a subterfuge to
> get the same effect, I suspect they won't allow it either.  Certainly
> you don't see CSNET members with addresses like Ohio-State.CS.NET;
> the CS.NET domain is there for the use of CSNET owned machines, not
> CSNET members.

A lot of CSNET mail goes via the CS.NET domain; they just hide the host
part in the user name, as in user%host@relay.cs.net.  We could do that
with FidoNET too, but we think it's a bad idea.  If we put the host
name out where it belongs, machines can do intelligent routing to a
FidoNET gateway with it, rather than always using a single overloaded
FidoNET gateway for all mail.

> From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP
> FIDO.ORG is a concept that might fly, after all, FIDO is an organization
> and all the proposed subdomains are members of the organization.  Also,
> UUCP is putting hobbyists who want domains in 3rd level domains under ORG...

Let's play "what's in a name".  FIDO.NET is a concept that might fly,
after all, FIDO is a network and all proposed subdomains are members of
the network.  If pigs had wings, they'd be pigeons.  Just because ORG
is popular this month with the uucp project is no reason to stick FidoNET
there.

> Others have pointed out that the domain used must be registered or it doesn't
> count, and that the RFC's forbid domains beginning with digits.  (This last
> restriction came as a surprise to me - we've already registered 3Com.COM
> and they're working fine, then someone pointed out the RFC.  It's currently
> under investigation, and it might turn out that leading digits are OK.)

Sendmail in 4.2BSD had problems with numeric host names; when such a
host sends out a HELO message as part of receiving mail, it will be
sent with the wrong SMTP reply code, which aborts the transmission.  I
kludged this at Sun to only screw up if the first THREE chars of the
hostname are numeric (I know...) and this change may have been adopted,
or the problem truly fixed, in 4.3BSD.  Note that this is only a
problem if the numeric-named site accepts SMTP connections with
sendmail; I didn't find any problem in sendmail sending mail to a
numeric name.

> You can't just create a top level domain name like .FIDO, or even a
> 2nd level domain name like .FIDO.NET.  You have to get the registrar
> of the parent domain to agree to it.  You'll never get the NIC to create
> a top level FIDO domain, and they own the root.

The NIC does not own the root; the NIC is *squatting* on the US root.
The NIC has no power over whether people use the .UK domain and has no
power over whether people use the .FIDO domain.  What are they gonna
do, send the DoD after us with tanks?  They may refuse to route mail to
.FIDO, but that's OK, they don't route mail to FidoNET right now, so
nobody is losing anything.  I presume that pathalias can cope with Yet
Another Top Level Domain without trouble, so most uucp sites would be
able to talk to FidoNET.  (Don't construe this paragraph to mean that I
like .FIDO addresses; I prefer FIDO.NET.  But if the NIC won't let
us have FIDO.NET, we can always use .FIDO.)

I suspect that if the NIC gets too high-handed about doling out the
domain address space in the US, that we can get somebody like NBS,
ANSI, or AT&T to do it in a more even-handed fashion.  ("Gee, you
*want* to hook up your mail system with us?  Good idea, let us know
what names you want" instead of "Grump grump, here, read these 1000 pages
of documentation and tell us your 5-year plan to convert to Our Way of
Doing Things -- then we'll consider it".)  Where is it in the military
services' charter to control the domestic email address space?
-- 
Copyright 1987 John Gilmore; you can redistribute only if your recipients can.
(This is an effort to bend Stargate to work with Usenet, not against it.)
{sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4,ucbvax}!hoptoad!gnu	       gnu@ingres.berkeley.edu