Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ziploc!eps From: eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions Subject: Re: UUCP Addresses Message-ID: <293@toaster.SFSU.EDU> Date: 3 Feb 90 06:37:19 GMT References: <7419@tank.uchicago.edu> Reply-To: eps@cs.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) Organization: San Francisco State University Lines: 33 In article <7419@tank.uchicago.edu> jill@tank.uchicago.edu (jill holly hansen) writes: >I understand that the UUCP extension on addresses is obsolete. For >example, I can't respond to a posting from someone such as >xxx@whatever.UUCP without changing it to xxx@whatever.UU.net. I'm not sure that's quite the right word for it. Domain names have certain advantages (they tend to get mail delivered to the right place). However, the Domain Name System is not designed to handle the kind of network (directed graph) .UUCP is. As has been pointed out, whatever.UU.NET is *not* the correct transformation. >My question is simply, why do we continue to get UUCP extensions? Is >it the "whatever" machine's fault, or should my machine's copy of >inews or rn, etc. be able to change UUCP to something proper? We use them because they are often the best representation. Converting everyone over to domain names would work if (1) everyone was one hop from an Internet site (2) the uucp community basically surrendered responsibility for long-haul traffic to the Internet, and (3) there was a guarantee that the Internet would basically absorb all uucp sites without imposing its own "reasonable use" constraints. The responsibility for doing somthing reasonable with .UUCP names is yours, but you can delegate it. We're not running pathalias (yet). Our mail system intercepts certain uucp names for sites that are also Internet sites, and turns them into Internet mail, properly routes a few high-volume paths (not "rabidly" and does not short-circuit anything), and hands anything it can't deal with to a site that can. -=EPS=-