Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!ll-xn!adelie!minya!jc
From: jc@minya.UUCP (John Chambers)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Duplicate site names
Message-ID: <443@minya.UUCP>
Date: 1 Jan 88 17:36:25 GMT
References: <271@ontenv.UUCP> <7905@g.ms.uky.edu> <44208@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> <277@fig.bbn.com>
Organization: home
Lines: 51
Keywords: pathalias maps duplicates
Summary: Let's give up on uniqueness.

In article <277@fig.bbn.com>, rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) writes:
> In comp.mail.uucp (<12251@necntc.NEC.COM>), nemap@necntc.nec.com (New England Mapping) writes:
> > I ask everyone who is choosing a new site name to check the maps
> > prior to coming to a final decisoon.  
> 
> This is a bit circular, isn't it?  Can't set up news without a feed,
> can't pick up news without a name, can't guarantee a unique name without
> the maps, can't get the maps without a feed...
> 
> And even if the loop is opened (by getting the nice, friendly, overworked
> admin on my feed to check for me "unh, bilbo is taken?  How about frodo?

Yeah, and it'll get a lot worse before it gets better.  Now I'm working at
a place that is installing all sorts of glorified terminals (Macs, IBM PCs,
Sun and Apollo diskless workstations) that each masquerade as a "host" and
need names.  Hundreds of them.  And this is just one company.  I can't tell
them that all the good ones are taken, and they'll just have to settle for
something like "qvx13j"; such bureaucratic monstrosities just elicit a lot
of incredulous looks.

Also, in lots of companies, such little machines get tied into the global
network in a bottom-up fashion.  First they are plopped down on a desk; then
they get plugged into the LAN; then the users discover that there are email
bridges and FTP that will let them talk to people in other departments; then
they ask if it's possible to send a file to another building; then they find
out that it's actually possible to get mail to other companies; ...

By the time the unique-name problem comes up, it's far too late; their
chosen name is hard-coded into all their friends' and colleagues' files.
You can tell them that they have to rename their machine, but it's of
little avail, especially when they start to realize how incredibly hard
it is.  (I mean, I've been trying for weeks to straighten out the mess
caused by a Sun that was configured with a '_' in its name; I've found
and changed hundreds of instances to '-', and there are still more out
there causing undeliverable mail...;-) 

It is starting to look like name uniqueness, laudable as the idea may
be, just ain't gonna work.  Maybe back when there were a mere 10000
nodes in the network, but no longer.  

The smail system isn't bothered by the fact that I live at an address
that is duplicated in other towns (one of which is the next town west
of here).  In the long run, a successful email system must handle the
local parceling out of addresses/names/whatever-you-call-them, too.
Otherwise we can't possibly grow to the billion-node system that the
postal system already handles (at a mere penny a day :-).  And don't
look now, but within a decade, email will be that big.  Even IBM is
now delivering PCs with email software in them.

-- 
John Chambers <{adelie,ima,maynard,mit-eddie}!minya!{jc,root}> (617/484-6393)