lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (03/01/85)
I should probably point out that my MSDOS UUCP/mail/netnews code, which I will start distributing shortly with skeletal docs, now includes "class 3" UUCP domain address routing, and is already in use by my Beta sites. They're finding that in practice it all works quite well, and are now able to route mail to .UUCP, .ARPA, .BITNET, etc. without any special actions being required by intervening sites. As a practical matter, as far as I am concerned, it indeed is important to relate the communications path to the domain in the case of "slow" delivery systems (that is, dialup-based systems). The complex nameserver and other concepts that make other techniques practical (many of which involve centralized administration, which we do not and will not have) simply are not practical for us. My primary complaints with the UUCP domain system have been based on traffic flow alterations that I've been afraid will occur and eventually clog backbone sites (that is, the smartest hosts will get the most traffic). However, I am now feeling better about this, now that I know that my code, at least, will enable a good deal of smarts even on tiny machines. The smarter the code at most sites, the less the traffic clogging that I would expect. Now that I've got this stuff working, I'm amazed at how useful it's turning out to be for dealing with .ARPA .CSNET and other traffic. Already I'm finding other sites sending unknown (to them) "@" based addresses to my site which are being correctly and quickly resolved. If I can get such good results on a small machine, I'm sure that people can do much better, using similar techniques, on full-size machines. --Lauren--