Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!ucsd!ucbvax!decwrl!vixie From: vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul Vixie) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: smail wants you to register a domain (using Path: for replies) Message-ID: <71@volition.dec.com> Date: 22 Aug 88 18:52:59 GMT References: <70@volition.dec.com> Organization: DEC Western Research Lab Lines: 119 In article <70@volition.dec.com> I wrote: # [...] # Registering in the u.* files costs nothing; smail is available for free; # [...] In some e-mail which I want to answer publically, claris!skip (Brian Schipper) said: # But the documentation I received with smail reads: # # from "Read.Me" - Updated 9/15/87 # # [...] # Prerequisites: # [...] # A properly registered domain name for your organization, such # as ATT.COM. (It is possible to run smail using a domain name # inder .UUCP, but since this can't be officialy registered, # it is appropriate only for testing.) # # I took this to mean that I shouldn't be running smail unless I was # officially registered. Are you telling me that it's ok to do it # as long as you're registered in the u.* files? If you were a smoker, and someone told you you really ought to stop smoking, you'd probably ignore them. Many people do this in response to the above so-called "prerequisite" in the smail docs -- it's non-ideal, but in fact there is still a great benefit to be had. (See my recent answer to "why should I install smail?" for a partial list of Great Benefits.) Smail is a product of the UUCP Project, which maintains the d.* and u.* files in the UUCP map which is regularly posted to comp.mail.maps. They will register your non-domainized name in u.* for free; they will register a domain name which you've gotten from some other network (CSNet, ARPANet, etc) in d.* for free; they will charge you something like $150 a year if they have to handle the paperwork between you and the SRI NIC, who issues domain names. WHY SHOULD YOU GET A DOMAIN NAME, ANYWAY? There are two main reasons. First, if you have lots of hosts, you only have to publish the connections of your "gateway" machines (that is, the machines which talk to the rest of the net). At Digital, this means that we publish "decwrl" as the "domain server" for the "dec.com" domain, and anyone who wants to send mail via UUCP to any machine whose name is "anything.dec.com" just sends it to decwrl, which is assumed to be able to get the mail delivered. How it gets the mail delivered is its business -- there's nothing in the maps to list any other DEC machine. This is an example of "data hiding" and I hope I don't need to explain to this audience why it's a good thing for all parties concerned (internal and external, users and administrators). The second main reason is so that people who want to send you mail from the sometimes-called DARPA Internet can just send mail to "person@domain" and let their name servers work out a way to get the mail sent to some Internet host that can UUCP the message to your system. Directly-connected Internet machines can send mail to eachother with what looks to them like a single hop; there's a distributed name server database which maps between domain and host names and their IP addresses; it also has room for other types of information; of particular importance to us here is the "MX record." An MX record says "mail to this domain should be sent to the Mail eXchanger for that domain, which is such-and-so host over there." If you don't have an MX record, then people on the directly-connected Internet who (usually) do not run a pathalias-based mailer (which means they don't know about d.* and u.*) cannot reach you except with oddball permutations like "vixie!paul@dec.com" which get the mail sent to the bit bucket more often then not. HOW CAN YOU GET A DOMAIN NAME? It boils down to: get someone to add you to their name server database. You can do this in several ways: 1. send mail to registry@stargate.com and ask for a domain registration information packet. This costs $150 a year to maintain; they will get in touch with the SRI NIC to get your domain name registered and put into the core name servers. 2. join CSNet. This costs many thousands of dollars per year. CSNet is run by BBN, which is the contractor that maintains the physical plant of what used to be called the ARPAnet. They have many interesting features, one of which is a close relationship with the SRI NIC. Through CSNet, you can also get (for a lot of money) a direct IP-level connection to the Internet. 3. NSFNet, BARRNet, and others. I don't know much about these. 4. UUNet. I believe that your domain name has to end in .uu.net for this, but UUNet has a name server and they can add an MX for you which points to them. You need to be a UUNet subscriber, which costs about $30 a month plus UUCP connect time. 5. Join the .US domain. This costs nothing. It's not a "domain name", since they want you to register each of your hosts with them except in special situations. But it is - free - and it gets you an MX record. Send mail to for more details on this. WHAT IF I DON'T GET A DOMAIN NAME? Then you'll be one of the thousands of sites that outputs "From:" lines with "@myhost.UUCP" in it. Big deal. Nobody will be able to reply to your mail unless they run pathalias and smail (and unless certain sites stop rewriting into on UUCP pass-though mail). That's about it. You're probably running without a domain name now. If you start running smail, you will be able to passively route outgoing mail and you'll stop mucking up "From:" lines on pass-through UUCP traffic. These are clearly benefits; if you don't get a domain name, then you've still taken a few steps forward. The u.* files in comp.mail.maps more-or-less make up the list of who should send out "From:" lines with @myhost.UUCP in them. I'd like this to be official, but that can never happen and I've accepted it (let's not start a discussion on this point). Smail and u.* registration are both free; they go together quite nicely. .US registration is also free, and the UUCP Project will add you to their d.* files as a "courtesy" if you've attained your domain name from another source. Or maybe they'll add your domainized name to u.*, but that's equivilent except to primadonna sites that only use the d.* files - there are not many of these. Getting a .US name is preferrable to using .UUCP, but the fact is, .UUCP works pretty well. -- Paul Vixie Digital Equipment Corporation Work: vixie@dec.com Play: paul@vixie.UUCP Western Research Laboratory uunet!decwrl!vixie uunet!vixie!paul Palo Alto, California, USA +1 415 853 6600 +1 415 864 7013