Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!apple!claris!ames!killer!wisner
From: wisner@killer.DALLAS.TX.US (Bill Wisner)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: smail wants you to register a domain (using Path: for replies)
Message-ID: <5372@killer.DALLAS.TX.US>
Date: 1 Sep 88 00:58:08 GMT
References: <70@volition.dec.com> <71@volition.dec.com> <935@cbnews.ATT.COM> <44401@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> <946@cbnews.ATT.COM> <355@bungia.Bungia.MN.ORG> <998@cbnews.ATT.COM> <117@com2serv.C2S.MN.ORG>
Reply-To: wisner@killer.Dallas.TX.US (Bill Wisner)
Organization: HASA
Lines: 16

>I would maintain that there is a lot of interest in parks.  They are
>what was intended by the MX system in the first place.  No one wanted
>every measley PC running UUPC to get an MX record!  That is an abuse
>of the nameservers, and a disservice to the community.

Er, how's that? The only site that could possibly be inconvenienced by
a lot of MX records is the site where the nameserver database is stored.
Each site in a domain may have a unique entry, or maybe there's a
wildcard record. In either case, a query will use exactly the same amount
of network bandwidth.

In fact, far from being an abuse of nameservers, having a unique record
for every site in a domain results in greater performance. Internet mailers
can tell instantly whether a site is valid (the server will return an
"unknown" response), rather than possibly waiting a day or two to get
an error message from the "hub" of a domain.