Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!hao!woods
From: woods@hao.ucar.edu (Greg Woods)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Duplicate site names
Message-ID: <1074@hao.ucar.edu>
Date: 5 Jan 88 21:38:06 GMT
References: <271@ontenv.UUCP> <7905@g.ms.uky.edu> <44208@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> <22341@hi.unm.edu> <446@minya.UUCP>
Reply-To: woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods)
Organization: High Altitude Obs./NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 26
Keywords: pathalias maps duplicates

In article <446@minya.UUCP> jc@minya.UUCP (John Chambers) writes:
>The basic scenario is that someone at Fubar University has their tut.edu 
>down the line from fu.edu; I send them mail to ...!fu.edu!tut.edu!jrh;
>the mailer at ... realizes there's a faster route to tut.edu than via
>fu.edu and mails it to tut.edu over in Finland.
>
>Proper domainizing doesn't help a bit here.

  In this case, Fubar University's mailer is seriously brain-damaged, because
the tut over in Finland is tut.fi, NOT tut.edu. That is EXACTLY the point
behind domain naming; it GUARANTEES unique netwide names as long as the names
within each domain are unique. There is also no reason why there can't
be a tut.colorado.edu (as there actually is at CU Boulder), a tut.osu.edu
and a tut.fi . PROPER domainizing will deliver all messages to the correct
address. The only names which must be unique are those that appear WITHOUT
domains in uucp paths. I solve this problem by 1) Making sure that our uucp
domain gateway machine has a unique name (hao); and 2) Making sure that all
news articles and mail messages out of here are stamped with a fully domainized
return path.  For example, we have a machine "groucho" here. There is also
a "groucho" in AT&T.  This does not present a problem, because mail messages
from OUR groucho have a From: line like "user@groucho.ucar.edu", and news
articles go out with the path ...!hao!groucho.ucar.edu!user. There is no
way that PROPER domainizing or path routing can fail to deliver this to
the correct "groucho". There is no ambiguity when full domains are used.

--Greg