Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!uwmcsd1!nic.MR.NET!umn-cs!bungia!ahby From: ahby@bungia.Bungia.MN.ORG (Shane P. McCarron) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: Routing mail through Digital's sites Message-ID: <302@bungia.Bungia.MN.ORG> Date: 27 Jul 88 00:26:40 GMT References: <10030@g.ms.uky.edu> <4971@zodiac.UUCP> Reply-To: ahby@bungia.UUCP (Shane P. McCarron) Distribution: na Organization: Bugoslavian Embassy, St. Paul, MN Lines: 76 In article <4971@zodiac.UUCP> jordan@ads.com (Jordan Hayes) writes: >David Herron writes: > > I think the solution lies over towards regional domains. > >Although the idea of "office park" domaining has been kicked around for >a while, no one has really jumped on it, and the software shouldn't >gleen any routing information from the name ... for three points, >carefully describe how "regional domains" would solve this problem >without once breaking the rule of "names are not routes" ... then point >out the essential differences between "regional domains" and >"administrative domains" and show how the software should treat them >differently ... > >/jordan Okay... I know that I am starting to sound like a broken record on this subject, but... Minnesota has in fact had such a system in place for over a year now. Let me try and summarize how it all works: First, you have to find some jerk who is willing to take on all of the responsibility and headaches of administering the domain park (that's me :-). Once you have found your patsy, you can go to town. The idea is to have everyone in the region get a domain address. Since the concept of domain addresses is well known in this forum, I will not belabor it - suffice it to say that you need to educate your public about why being a member of the internet community is a good thing. Once you have done this you try to get the major local sites to sign up, and the rest follow. That's it in a nutshell. For those of you who want gruesome details, I wrote a (rejected) paper for this summer's Usenix about it, and I would be happy to send it along. To address the points raised above: The names are not routes theory is fine as far as it goes. However, in the domain world names are routes. If I send something to site.lala.berkeley.edu I am pretty sure that it is going to go to UCB, and then be relayed from there. If it doesn't actually go that way, that's fine. However, the route is implied. Any site who is concerned about being associated with a specific region (because, for instance, they might move) can of course establish their own domain. The regional parks (like mn.org or chi.il.us) are for those companies or persons who want an internet name but do not want the hassle of finding forwarders and nameservers on the internet, or who do not want to clutter up an already polluted namespace. What is the difference between a "regional domain" and an "administrative domain"? Well, the former is a place in which companies, or administrative entities, can place themselves without a hassle. An administrative domain is just that - a namespace that is administered by a central authority. While a regional domain is sort of like that, it can be said that the regional domain park only administers the second level of the namespace. In an administrative domain, the namespace control would probably happen throughout the space. How would the software handle it differently? Well, it doesn't really have to. All that needs to happen is that mail destined for a specific domain be sent through that domain's gateway. This happens now, at all levels of the tree, and I don't believe that we need to complicate the situation any more. While there may be many gateways into sub-domains of a namespace, that is also automatically handled currently. Again, we need do nothing. This answer is so clear to me that I must not understand the question :-) Anyway, what are the advantages of domain parks? Well, they provide a central, regional routing and naming authority. This site is used as a router by about 60% of the registered sites in this region. Since these sites, for the most part, have no links outside of the region, they can leave the routing of outbound mail to bungia. I could go on about this, but I'm tired of typing :-) If there is sufficient interest, I will post a summary of all the services that our domain park provides to the subscribers, as well as a fee schedule, and ideas about how to start a regional domain park in your area. -- Shane P. McCarron UUCP: ahby@bungia.mn.org Systems Analyst ATT: +1 612 224-9239