Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!epiwrl!epimass!jbuck
From: jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Duplicate site names
Message-ID: <1805@epimass.EPI.COM>
Date: 6 Jan 88 19:09:41 GMT
References: <271@ontenv.UUCP> <7905@g.ms.uky.edu> <44208@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> <22341@hi.unm.edu> <446@minya.UUCP> <1074@hao.ucar.edu>
Reply-To: jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck)
Organization: Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, CA
Lines: 45
Keywords: pathalias maps duplicates

In article <1074@hao.ucar.edu> woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods) writes:
[ The old "tut.fi" vs "tut.ohio.edu" (sp?) argument ]
>address. The only names which must be unique are those that appear WITHOUT
>domains in uucp paths.

This is only true because certain anti-social mailers insist on
rerouting bang paths.  If I have a site "ohio" which is unique, and
it talks to tut.ohio.edu and not to tut.fi, then I insist that

	...!ohio!tut!user

is a unique path that specifies the correct tut.  Mailers have no
business rewriting valid bang paths.  For an invalid bang path, the
mailer should route to the leftmost host, not the rightmost host.
One exception (this is John Gilmore's idea) is that if there is
a domain name further on in the path you can route to it.  For
example, in

	foo!bar!bletch.com!user

you can route directly to bletch.com since it's guaranteed to be
unique.  But I don't think you should route even these.

Greg's criterion would prevent any UUCP site from existing that isn't
registered with the UUCP project, unless by sheer luck they pick a
unique name and no one comes along later and registers that name for
themselves.  

Just the same, if it is possible to do what Greg recommends (putting
fully qualified names in the bang path), I would recommend that
everyone do so, just to protect themselves against overly clever
mailers.

Site administrators should consider the part of the Hippocratic Oath
that says "First, do no harm."  If you can talk to the first host
in the path, but you think you know a better route, are you sure
that that route is going to work in all cases?  If the path specified
doesn't match what your database says is the optimal path, is it
possible that the user is reacting to a news.config message saying
"Avoid site fubar, we're down for two weeks"?
-- 
- Joe Buck  {uunet,ucbvax,sun,decwrl,<smart-site>}!epimass.epi.com!jbuck
	    Old internet mailers: jbuck%epimass.epi.com@uunet.uu.net

Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them.   -- Richard Bach