bandy@amdcad.UUCP (04/08/87)
MORAL: People who give other folks uucp connections and news feeds should look in the maps *first* and tell new sites that they may not have names that people already have. In article <473@potomac.ads.arpa> jtn@potomac.ads.arpa (John T. Nelson) writes: > >The Washington Office of Advanced Decision Systems Sun III "potomac"... > > >#N potomac >#S Sun III/180; 4.3 BSD UNIX >#O Advanced Decision Systems (Washington Office) >#C John T. Nelson, Mark Grover >#E potomac!jtn, jtn@ads.arpa >#T +1 703 243 1611 >#P 1500 Wilson Boulevard #600, Arlington VA, 22209 >#L 77 05 00 N / 38 53 00 W Washington DC >#R Soon be connected to seismo via Internet >#W potomac!jtn (John T. Nelson); Thu Mar 26 15:38:58 EST 1987 ># >potomac sundc(HOURLY), dolqci(HOURLY) Since I know the sysadmin at Potomac, I knew that there was a site on the net called "potomac". Here is the uuhosts output: UUCP mail path from amdcad to potomac: potomac ames!seismo!bdmrrr!potomac!%s 200 UUCP mail information for host potomac (#USENET lines show USENET news links): #Name potomac #System-CPU-OS Parallel XR300; 4.2 BSD UNIX #Organization Potomac Scheduling Company #Contact John S. Labovitz #Electronic-Address potomac!jsl #Telephone +1 301 229 8880 #Postal-Address 5420 Mohican Road, Bethesda, MD 20817 #Latitude-Longitude #Remarks #USENET bdmrrrr #Written-by bdmrrr!jsl (John S. Labovitz); Wed Jan 21 17:47:04 EST 1987 # potomac bdmrrr(EVENING) -- Andrew Scott Beals, {lll-crg,decwrl,allegra}!amdcad!bandy +1 408 749 3683
larry@kitty.UUCP (04/08/87)
In article <16008@amdcad.AMD.COM>, bandy@amdcad.AMD.COM (Andy Beals) writes: > MORAL: > People who give other folks uucp connections and news feeds should look in the > maps *first* and tell new sites that they may not have names that people > already have. I agree with you 100%! However, the rest of the world does not seem to be unanimous in holding this opinion. Some months ago we had a problem with one of our local machines, ``calico''. It seems that another site had begin using the name ``calico'', and we began receiving a lot of mail (mostly through seismo) for the other site. This was rather aggravating, since not only did we have to pay the telephone charges for receiving the mail, but we also had to pay to return it! I sent mail to the "other" site on a path it appeared to be using in some Net articles, with no response. Finally, I placed a telephone call to the SA at a large site that was feeding the "other" calico, and explained my problem. The response that I received was rather indifferent, and the SA indicated that he saw no problem with a duplicate sitename as long as the people at the "other" site included a proper routing address with their articles and mail. I beg to differ, because many sites have mailers that will look in the pathalias database - regardless of a specified routing. Since there has always been only one registered ``calico'' - our site - this still presents a problem. I realize that there isn't much that I can do about a site that simply insists upon duplicating an existing sitename - but perhaps larger sites that handle uucp connections CAN exert some responsibility in this type of situation. Yes, I know about domains. But from what I see of the uucp world, it will be a LONG time before domain-style addressing and associated mailers will solve the problem in that fashion. And yes, I know about Harris's Lament; however, if one is clever, there are many "cute" sitenames left. Actually, in view of my fondness toward cats, I always wanted to put up a site named ``pussy''. Now, THAT would be cute! So far, I haven't had the chutzpah to do it... <> Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, New York <> UUCP: {allegra|ames|boulder|decvax|rocksanne|watmath}!sunybcs!kitty!larry <> VOICE: 716/688-1231 {hplabs|ihnp4|mtune|seismo|utzoo}!/ <> FAX: 716/741-9635 {G1,G2,G3 modes} "Have you hugged your cat today?"
bob@osu-eddie.UUCP (04/09/87)
In article <1690@kitty.UUCP> larry@kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman) writes: >In article <16008@amdcad.AMD.COM>, bandy@amdcad.AMD.COM (Andy Beals) writes: >> (...) >> MORAL: >> People who give other folks uucp connections and news feeds should >> look in the maps *first* and tell new sites that they may not have >> names that people already have. > (...) > I realize that there isn't much that I can do about a site >that simply insists upon duplicating an existing sitename - but >perhaps larger sites that handle uucp connections CAN exert some >responsibility in this type of situation. Every time I set up a new UUCP connection for somebody in Columbus or elsewhere in Ohio, I am very careful to check the maps, and have disappointed several new sites because they couldn't have their first-choice name. Our Department had (and will have again someday) a Sun called `zaphod'. I entered its name in our map entry as a local host on our Department's Ethernet. It turns out that the other machine called `zaphod', which already had the name, started experiencing mail routing problems soon after the map entry was broadcast. I didn't know, until Mark Horton told me, that information in that local-hosts line gets broadcast and used by Pathalias in the outside world. He suggested that our local hosts (behind our UUCP gateway) are our own business and nobody else really needs to know how to get to them. Until the world is fully domain-ified (including ourselves) we will simply include our local Ether host list as a comment in our map entry, thus (hopefully) avoiding the problem. So, it's not just new leaf nodes and irresponsible, uncaring feed SAs that get into problems. It's also people like me, somewhat under-informed but not maliciously so, exploring new areas and trying to get something useful done. Hardly fodder for a flame-fest! -- Bob Sutterfield, Department of Computer and Information Science The Ohio State University; 2036 Neil Ave. Columbus OH USA 43210-1277 bob@ohio-state.{arpa,csnet} or ...!cb{osgd,att}!osu-eddie!bob (614)292-7348 (office) or -0915 (operators) or -7325 (answering machine)