Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu!karl
From: karl@triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Grumpy != grumpy
Message-ID: <25641@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 25 Oct 88 16:56:10 GMT
References: <398@ditka.UUCP> <42300005@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu>
Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Lines: 45
In-reply-to: kai@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu's message of 24 Oct 88 01:14:00 GMT

kai@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu writes:
        Changing the name is, of course, the *right* solution.

    Are we supposed to register EVERY site on EVERY local network with
    a name unique to the world, just so that some rude people will be
    happy?  How long before we run out of unique names?

[a] Yes.  [b] Ages ago.

If you're going to use a single-component name without any kind of
qualifiers, then Yes, you very much need to register a name which is
guaranteed to be unique in the world.  You can't guarantee the
operation of anyone else's mailer.  Whether you agree with Rutgers'
operation or not is of no relevance - they actively reroute.  That
means that your non-unique hostnames are subject to misdelivery.

The ability to register hosts for UUCP purposes has existed for lo
these several years for exactly this reason.  People started having
name collisions a LONG time ago, and the registration process was the
solution.

The only way to have local names that might not be unique is to
qualify them within some domain.  Our gateway host is called Tut.
Would you care to guess how many "tut"s are out there?  (At least 5
that I can name in 30 seconds or less.)  The One and Only Real Tut is
in Finland - guess where mountains of OSU-bound mail ended up until I
fixed that glitch in our news configuration?  Now every piece of news
and mail leaving OSU is fully-qualified, much to the consternation of
people who worry (needlessly) about the length of Path: headers and
such - but we have effectively registered ALL of our hosts by using
domain qualifiers.  Your (e.g.) `banana' cannot possibly conflict with
my `banana,' because my `banana' is called `banana.cis.ohio-state.edu'
when given proper reference.

Realize also that news posted from a private, name-conflicting,
single-component-name host will not be seen by anyone on the real,
registered host by that name, because the news software's audit trail
of hosts in the Path: header will keep it from going there.  This is
Bad.

I've heard all these amazing claims that "I shouldn't have to register
my hosts" but I've never yet seen a good explanation for why it isn't
A Good Idea.

--Karl