Newsgroups: can.uucp
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!neat.ai.toronto.edu!rayan
From: rayan@ai.toronto.edu (Rayan Zachariassen)
Subject: please clean up your uucp map forms
Message-ID: <89Jan3.211712est.38118@neat.ai.toronto.edu>
Distribution: can
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 89 21:16:08 EST

Many of the forms I get sent are out-of-spec wrt details of their
syntax.  I make an effort to correct such problems before the entry
goes into the map, but I keep doing this over and over with the same
entries.  Obviously many of you are stashing your entry away somewhere
and never look at what actually makes it into the map.  Even worse, you
give your entry to friends and foes who then start sending me forms I
have to correct.  Because there are so many of them, it has been easier
to just edit the forms every time I get them instead of sending back
individual complaints.  The stuff I waded through for the posting in
early December was very bad, about 60% of entries had errors.  This
month's posting (which went to rutgers today) had maybe 30% errors in
the submitted forms.  I'm sure some of you aren't aware you don't have
proper forms, so here's a plea:

	When the next map posting comes out, go refresh the copy of Your
	map entry that you have squirrelled away somewhere with whatever
	you find in the map.  Then use that as a base.

It would be quite helpful if everyone did this, so please take the time.

There are also some creative people out there that like to give better
information in a non-standard way... please remember that the maps are
supposed to be parsed by programs, including the #<letter> lines!  This
means your creativity is better expressed in real comment lines instead of
the ones that have predefined syntax and semantics.

Here are some quick guidelines for new sites:

- copy another site's map entry FROM THE MAP, not from what they send you.

- UUCP host names may not (by fiat) contain uppercase letters or underscores.
  It is recommended they start with an alphabetic and continue with
  alphanumerics or dashes and don't end with a dash.

- get in the habit of checking your map at regular intervals.  Whether or not
  there have been any changes, you should send in a new one every 6 months,
  and always remember to update the timestamp (the #W line) with the output
  of the date command.

- if you don't know your latitude/longitude, try interpolating based on
  nearby UUCP sites, or ask your local library, airport, or city hall.
  (I have heard interesting stories of people's reactions when asked
     "Where are you?" or "Where am I?", so don't get discouraged!)

- do not use @'s *anywhere* in the link data, this is an especially popular
  thing to do for internal LANs but is outlawed.  The objective is to
  end up with all-! unambiguous routes.

- think hard before you register internal hosts in your organization.  If
  you have any, your site is a good candidate for needing a domain name.
  The map is Very Large and doing our bit to reduce it is important.

- always send map *updates* to utai!path.  Like it says in the first few
  lines of each map file, sending to rutgers!uucpmap is totally useless for
  updates since Mel Pleasant just forwards it to utai!path.  Send it to
  utai!path to begin with.  Also, please don't send map-related stuff to
  me personally, but use the utai!path address.  Map maintenance is done
  out of an account at CSRI which serves to collect all the information.
  If you mail to utai!path, I will see it in my mailbox too.  If you mail
  to me, I have to forward it to utai!path anyway.

You may be interested in some numbers from the latest map crunching:

There are approx 370 registered UUCP sites in Canada, approx 6330 in the
world.  There are 16390 known ``names'' in the UUCP map (this includes domain
names, aliases, and ghost sites -- sites that aren't registered), and about
37.5k links.

There are 58 registered subdomains of CA, 12 of which where handled through
the UUCP liaison (me).  There is 1 .COM and 4 .EDU subdomains in Canada
(that I know of) and several more subsidiaries of .COM's based elsewhere.

The UofToronto LAN map database is about 1Megabyte of text, approx
4Meg of DBM files (about half are holes).  If this seems a bit larger
than yours, it might be because all our outgoing links are referred
to by long.domain.names.

Its a big BIG world.

Happy New Year!

rayan