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From: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: Use domains without registering?
Message-ID: <9909@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Date: 4 Mar 90 17:41:08 GMT
References: <72@dynasys.UUCP>
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Reply-To: spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
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Organization: Department of Computer Science, Purdue University
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In article <72@dynasys.UUCP> jessea@dynasys.UUCP (Jesse W. Asher) asks
why he can't just make up a domain, put it in his uucp map entry, and
then use it without going through the formal registration period.

Well, there are a number of reasons.  The first is that large numbers
of sites out there (ours included) use the nameservers to resolve
addresses.  If you made up your own domain (say, dynasys.com), and
started using it, all of the sites that use nameservers, or that
forward their domain-ized mail to sites with nameservers, would
suddenly be unable to communicate with your site.  For instance, if I
tried to send mail to someone with an address like that, it would come
back with an "unknown domain" error.  The number of sites in this
category is large, and growing larger everyday; it also includes most
"major" sites on the net. We don't use the uucp maps to send mail to
sites with proper domain names. I suspect you wouldn't even be able to
get mail through uunet, since I bet the mailer there does exactly the
same thing as ours.

A second good reason is collisions.  Maybe you're the only dynasys in
the world.  Maybe not.  If you don't have a central authority that
tracks names and ensures there are no collisions, you may suddenly
find that some other place out there is also going by the name
"dynasys.com" -- and they've registered their name so you're out of
luck.

A third reason is that I bet the folks maintaining the maps won't take
a domain name in a map entry unless it is registered somewhere.

If you're going to do it, do it right.  Get a properly registered domain.
-- 
Gene Spafford
NSF/Purdue/U of Florida  Software Engineering Research Center,
Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-2004
Internet:  spaf@cs.purdue.edu	uucp:	...!{decwrl,gatech,ucbvax}!purdue!spaf