Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cwjcc!hal!ncoast!allbery
From: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: this might be getting out of hand...
Message-ID: <12546@ncoast.UUCP>
Date: 13 Sep 88 22:06:36 GMT
References: <676@bacchus.DEC.COM> <881@vsi1.UUCP> <340@ateng.UUCP> <1966@stpstn.UUCP> <3746@palo-alto.DEC.COM> <211@mango.athertn.Atherton.COM> <12212@ncoast.UUCP> <10185@s.ms.uky.edu>
Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery)
Followup-To: comp.mail.uucp
Organization: Cleveland Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, Oh
Lines: 56

As quoted from <10185@s.ms.uky.edu> by david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae):
+---------------
| In article <12212@ncoast.UUCP> allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon S. Allbery) writes:
| >We should require sites using the Internet for mail routing to become
| >registered in at least the UUCP maps, so that *some* sites can find them.
| >Otherwise they land in the dead letter room, just like US mail replies.
| >There just isn't any way to do it otherwise, you can't teach a computer
| >clairvoyance or telepathy.
| 
| The maps as-is contain gateways to all the top-level domains, the
| unofficial domains, and to many second level domains.  Thus, you
| could take out the .uky.edu gateway advertised as being at
| ukma, and someone on the UUCP network using smail (for instance)
| would send mail for ukcc.uky.edu to their nearest .edu gateway.
| Right now their smail would send it to ukma.  In either case, ukcc.uky.edu
| is not announced in the UUCP maps (and likely never will be) yet
| some random person out in UUCP land knows how to get there -- sort of.
+---------------

I said *at least* the UUCP maps.  *.uky.edu is an Internet domain, ergo
the .EDU nameserver knows about it, so it's reachable.  But what happens if
you try to send mail to telo1000!bsa?  telo1000 isn't in the maps
(deliberately; it's unclear what will actually happen, it may have a
different name when it's fully set up), and isn't in the Internet name-
servers for any domain, so you'd bounce it.  Now, if you sent to a more
complete address (ncoast!telo1000!bsa) you could do it because ncoast knows
about telo1000; but e.g. "sun!telo1000!bsa" would fail because "sun" doesn't
know about it.

+---------------
| Smail is a domain based mailer and can route to unknown hosts.
+---------------

Iff they are either (1) local (i.e. in L.sys/Systems) or (2) in the maps.
Smail can't help you find "telo1000" unless you're sending your mail from
ncoast.

+---------------
| We don't need to register each and every internet host in the UUCP 
| maps in order to do this either.
+---------------

Aha!  Your entire message is based on a misunderstanding!

I said "AT LEAST" -- that does not mean that the UUCP maps must contain
all systems, it means that the UUCP maps are the simplest way to become
known to the Internet.  Of course, you could do more work and/or shell out
$150/year and get yourself listed in an Internet nameserver instead, but
(as you said) this is ridiculous for all the UUPC-running DOS boxes, etc.
out there.

++Brandon
-- 
Brandon S. Allbery, uunet!marque!ncoast!allbery			DELPHI: ALLBERY
	    For comp.sources.misc send mail to ncoast!sources-misc
"Don't discount flying pigs before you have good air defense." -- jvh@clinet.FI