Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!acorn!ixi!clive
From: clive@ixi.UUCP (Clive Feather)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: The UUCP domain
Summary: Some questions
Message-ID: <168@ixi.UUCP>
Date: 18 May 89 10:19:34 GMT
Reply-To: clive@ixi.uucp (Clive Feather)
Organization: IXI Limited
Lines: 49
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There have been several postings recently implying that the .uucp
domain is not a real one, and that sites in this domain should get
themselves registered in a real domain.

Firstly, can someone please explain to me why .uucp is not a real
domain ? There seems to be some kind of registration mechanism to
prevent name clashes (at least, I had to register with uknet@ukc.ac.uk),
and UKC claims (in a monthly posting with "uk" distribution) that all
mail addressed to any .uucp site in the UK will be correctly routed
by them.

Secondly, is the only legal domain in the UK the .uk domain ? If
so, am I correct in thinking that UKC is the registration point for
this domain ? When I attempted to get a .uk registration from UKC,
I was pointed on to UMIST. Between the two, they implied that .uk
registration is equivalent to registration with JANET (a UK academic
network), and commercial organisations must pay UKL 100 to register.
Since I don't seem to be getting anything for my money, why pay ?
Incidentally, the .uucp registration was free.

Thirdly, is there anything to prevent UKC from constructing a new
domain (.uucp.uk or .gen.uk), and using this instead of the apparently
dubious .uucp domain ? If not, could anyone at UKC who is reading
this please explain why they don't ?

Fourthly, suppose that IXI were registered as "ixi.domain". If I
understand the domain system correctly, people here can invent names
of the form "user@machine.ixi.domain", or "user@machine.net.ixi.domain",
and, providing the one machine here with the modem can cope with
routing these internally, anyone else in the world can use these
addresses and rely on it being delivered because no-one outside IXI
looks at anything other than the "ixi.domain" bit to route it to here.
Am I correct ? If so, am I allowed to do the same thing with the
.uucp domain (i.e. use addresses of the form "user@machine.ixi.uucp" ?
If not, why not ?

If any of these questions are answered by a RFC, could someone please
e-mail me a copy.

I am sorry if anyone feels that this is trivial and/or treading on
someone else's toes (particulary UKC, who do a wonderful job) - a
relatively new sysadmin wants to know the right way to do things
(if Usenet has such a thing).

Please e-mail, and I'll summarise to the net.
-- 
Clive D.W. Feather           clive@ixi.uucp
IXI Limited                  ...!mcvax!ukc!ixi!clive (riskier)
                             +44 223 462 131