Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: registering UUCP sites
Message-ID: <12649@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 22 Nov 88 16:56:22 GMT
References: <1165@fig.bbn.com> <124@minya.UUCP> <1218@fig.bbn.com>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 62

In article <1218@fig.bbn.com> rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) writes:

| Finally, there is no bureacracy somewhere that requires you to
| fill do ANY paperwork.  When you unpack your new machine you call
| somebody INSIDE YOUR ORGANIZATION and say "anybody using the
| name 'host'?"

  What organization? With the advent of cheap unix-pcs and <$300
versions of UNIX which include uucp, there are thousands of sites which
are not in an organization. Or more accurately they are in usenet. If
there were no usenet maps, I would agree that no one should look for a
free lunch and ask that maps be created. Given that the information is
there, why not treat .uucp as an organization?

| >  Why should their internal use of uucp for file transfer
| >obligate them to fill out papers for some outside email authority 
| >that they've often never even heard of?
| 
| It doesn't require any outside authority:
| 	No mail?  No domain name necessary.
| 	Domain name necessary?  Ask your local authority.

  The local athority is the usenet maps for many sites. That is what
registering .uucp would make official. There are just too many sites who
are on usenet for many of us to ignore, even (or particularly)
commercial sites.

  Domains were intended to be a solution, not a religion. The idea that
some domains be formed to represent organizations is obvious; group all
of the GE sites as a whole and call us something.ge.com and let GE
handle delivery. This has nothing to do with geographic location, just
connectivity.

  The .us domain is purely geographic, and there is little reason to
think that sites in the same area would be in some way connected. Trying
to use location as a domain is for the gratification of domain gurus,
since there is no reason to think that sixwbn.albany.ny.us would even
know that bilzvax.albany.ny.us exists. That is, machines are allowed to
*register* but there seems to be no reason to believe that they can
connect.

  How much better, then, to use .uucp as the domain for the usenet.
Machines in the map can connect, and I can assume that joesbar.uucp will
somewhat be reachable from armpitz.uucp. A domain should be composed of
a group of machines which are all known and deliverable from a gateway.
What gateway do we have for .us? If I want to register
bilzvax.albany.ny.us and I'm the first one in that domain do I have to
become a gateway? Do I agree to connect to every machine in the area, or
must they connect to me?

  Fortunately good ideas are hard to keep down. As long as sites use
.uucp in a way that's meaningful to them it will be workable, even if
not blessed by an athority. I realize that uunet would like to get a
registration fee and connect fee from every site on the net, but I doubt
that it will happen.
________________________________________________________________

This one is a personal opinion, mine alone.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me