Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!think!ames!nrl-cmf!mailrus!umix!honey
From: honey@umix.cc.umich.edu (Peter Honeyman)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Pathalias vs reality
Message-ID: <3842@umix.cc.umich.edu>
Date: 13 Mar 88 06:27:24 GMT
References: <697@btnix.UUCP>
Reply-To: honey@citi.umich.edu (Peter Honeyman)
Organization: Center for Information Technology Integration, Univ of Michigan
Lines: 17
UUCP-Path: {uunet,rutgers}!citi!honey


pathalias provides one sort of name service, dns (or udp/53) another.
pathalias is not an attempt to displace dns; by the same token, dns is
not equipped to provide uucp source routes.  to work properly, both
pathalias and dns require access to current data.  this is easy to get
in the internet, not so easy to get in a dialup network.

name service is the issue here, not "domain based mailers."  many of us
who run domain based mailers (or, in my case, domain tolerant mailers)
also rely heavily on pathalias.

	peter

ps:  i should add that i'm not at all unhappy with the timeliness of
the usenet maps.  at the very least, we've come a long way from the
days when smb, trb, sob, and ksh collected and redistributed the maps.
i agree that "posted" maps should not advertise data that change from
week to week.