gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) (04/20/87)
This is actually pretty funny. The uucp project has been pushing little uucp hosts to register in made-up geographic domains because the administrative burden is supposedly too high if they all use their real names. Now I am hearing the same people saying that we can't hook up a geographically named network (FidoNET) to the domain system because it ties the network geography to the name. Instead, they want all 1500 FidoNET hosts to come up with (geographic?) domain names and register them (for $20/yr apiece? Hmm, $30K/yr for the registry may be the motivation here). We're trying to build a gateway, not an empire. From: gore@nucsrl.UUCP (Jacob Gore) > The whole beauty of Internet addresses (as I see it) is that they hide the > networking details... From: fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (Erik E. Fair) > I agree wholeheartedly, however, the other people working on the > gateway software don't agree with me. What makes Internet domain addresses better than what they replaced is that ROUTING is not implied by the address. With uucp addresses, you needed to specify a route through unrelated machines. We had to fix that before our addresses could be used by Internet mailers. This is not true with FidoNET; they already have a geographic, hierarchical, fully-qualified naming system, with auto routing, in place. What's wrong with grafting their naming system into the domain tree? If the domain administrators are sufficiently inflexible that they want all other organizations to restructure their name spaces just so they can connect up, it strikes me that the domain concept and/or administrators don't have enough flexibility for the REAL job we are trying to do -- make all the email systems interoperate. I can see that hosts which use multiple networks (at once, or over a long period of time) might want to have domain names without a network name in them. Nothing we are doing prevents FidoNET nodes from registering like anybody else; in fact, we are *enabling* them to do so by building gateways to the domain system. But we want to preserve connectivity to the sites that have no need to register because they aren't on multiple networks and probably never will be. From: david@ukma.UUCP > The .net domains are supposed to be for the control centers of > other networks. The only machines under .cs.net are those at > the csnet-relay site. No others. From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP > The NIC is strongly > opposed to physical network based domains like user@host.UUCP and > user@host.ARPA. Since user@host.FIDO.NET is just a subterfuge to > get the same effect, I suspect they won't allow it either. Certainly > you don't see CSNET members with addresses like Ohio-State.CS.NET; > the CS.NET domain is there for the use of CSNET owned machines, not > CSNET members. A lot of CSNET mail goes via the CS.NET domain; they just hide the host part in the user name, as in user%host@relay.cs.net. We could do that with FidoNET too, but we think it's a bad idea. If we put the host name out where it belongs, machines can do intelligent routing to a FidoNET gateway with it, rather than always using a single overloaded FidoNET gateway for all mail. > From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP > FIDO.ORG is a concept that might fly, after all, FIDO is an organization > and all the proposed subdomains are members of the organization. Also, > UUCP is putting hobbyists who want domains in 3rd level domains under ORG... Let's play "what's in a name". FIDO.NET is a concept that might fly, after all, FIDO is a network and all proposed subdomains are members of the network. If pigs had wings, they'd be pigeons. Just because ORG is popular this month with the uucp project is no reason to stick FidoNET there. > Others have pointed out that the domain used must be registered or it doesn't > count, and that the RFC's forbid domains beginning with digits. (This last > restriction came as a surprise to me - we've already registered 3Com.COM > and they're working fine, then someone pointed out the RFC. It's currently > under investigation, and it might turn out that leading digits are OK.) Sendmail in 4.2BSD had problems with numeric host names; when such a host sends out a HELO message as part of receiving mail, it will be sent with the wrong SMTP reply code, which aborts the transmission. I kludged this at Sun to only screw up if the first THREE chars of the hostname are numeric (I know...) and this change may have been adopted, or the problem truly fixed, in 4.3BSD. Note that this is only a problem if the numeric-named site accepts SMTP connections with sendmail; I didn't find any problem in sendmail sending mail to a numeric name. > You can't just create a top level domain name like .FIDO, or even a > 2nd level domain name like .FIDO.NET. You have to get the registrar > of the parent domain to agree to it. You'll never get the NIC to create > a top level FIDO domain, and they own the root. The NIC does not own the root; the NIC is *squatting* on the US root. The NIC has no power over whether people use the .UK domain and has no power over whether people use the .FIDO domain. What are they gonna do, send the DoD after us with tanks? They may refuse to route mail to .FIDO, but that's OK, they don't route mail to FidoNET right now, so nobody is losing anything. I presume that pathalias can cope with Yet Another Top Level Domain without trouble, so most uucp sites would be able to talk to FidoNET. (Don't construe this paragraph to mean that I like .FIDO addresses; I prefer FIDO.NET. But if the NIC won't let us have FIDO.NET, we can always use .FIDO.) I suspect that if the NIC gets too high-handed about doling out the domain address space in the US, that we can get somebody like NBS, ANSI, or AT&T to do it in a more even-handed fashion. ("Gee, you *want* to hook up your mail system with us? Good idea, let us know what names you want" instead of "Grump grump, here, read these 1000 pages of documentation and tell us your 5-year plan to convert to Our Way of Doing Things -- then we'll consider it".) Where is it in the military services' charter to control the domestic email address space? -- Copyright 1987 John Gilmore; you can redistribute only if your recipients can. (This is an effort to bend Stargate to work with Usenet, not against it.) {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4,ucbvax}!hoptoad!gnu gnu@ingres.berkeley.edu
pozar@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Pozar) (04/20/87)
> From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP > FIDO.ORG is a concept that might fly, after all, FIDO is an organization > and all the proposed subdomains are members of the organization. Also, > UUCP is putting hobbyists who want domains in 3rd level domains under ORG... The only thing I can add to that (not knowing completely how the net gods work) is that FIDO is NOT an organization. IFNA is an organization that is a support group for FIDO, but FIDO is a net. Any one wanting to apply to the net and showing the ability to be able to send/receive mail can join. There are no fees collected by IFNA. The system is totally free and very anarchistic. If we are baseing the name of the gateway on FIDO (not IFNA) the better name would be .NET. Also, I'm not sure what you consider hobbyists. If you mean people that are doing this non-professionally or with out pay, or are neophytes, think again. The net contains individuals from 15 year olds to corperations like BYTE, USR, PC-WEEK, US Forest Service (the goverment list is too long to list here), Electric Companies, Radio Stations from KLOK-FM (San Francisco) to Radio Netherlands, and software companies like Phoenix. There are several companies also makeing their bread and butter with the net. Although commercial advertising is discouraged, shareware is encouraged. I do not see the difference between UUCP and Fido on this matter. I have noticed that UUCP seems to be less willing for change or progress. -- Tim Pozar UUCP pozar@hoptoad.UUCP Fido 125/406 USNail KLOK-FM 77 Maiden Lane San Francisco CA 94108
bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) (04/20/87)
Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.41.4 of Mon Mar 23 1987 on bu-cs (berkeley-unix) >I suspect that if the NIC gets too high-handed about doling out the >domain address space in the US, that we can get somebody like NBS, >ANSI, or AT&T to do it in a more even-handed fashion. ("Gee, you >*want* to hook up your mail system with us? Good idea, let us know >what names you want" instead of "Grump grump, here, read these 1000 pages >of documentation and tell us your 5-year plan to convert to Our Way of >Doing Things -- then we'll consider it".) Where is it in the military >services' charter to control the domestic email address space? >-- >Copyright 1987 John Gilmore; you can redistribute only if your recipients can. Whoa, John, hold on there. There's an old joke about two old men talking about what kind of fancy carraige they would each build if they were rich. They get into an argument about some detail and finally one of them erupts "FINE! THEN GET OUT OF MY CARRAIGE IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT!" Has the NIC disapproved anything? Has anyone brought this discussion to, perhaps, the TCP/IP mailing list for discussion? Does anyone not believe that a lot of those RFCs we all point to exist precisely to overturn earlier RFCs because someone pointed out a problem? Has anyone known the NIC (et al) to reject an attempt to fix things up? Umm, why doesn't someone ask? Most decisions I've seen were simply based upon their stated goals; to provide standards for interoperability in highly heterogeneous networking (successfully I might add.) -Barry Shein, Boston University
mark@cbosgd.ATT.COM (Mark Horton) (04/21/87)
In article <2020@hoptoad.uucp> gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes: >This is actually pretty funny. The uucp project has been pushing >little uucp hosts to register in made-up geographic domains because the >administrative burden is supposedly too high if they all use their real >names. Now I am hearing the same people saying that we can't hook up a >geographically named network (FidoNET) to the domain system because it >ties the network geography to the name. Instead, they want all 1500 >FidoNET hosts to come up with (geographic?) domain names and register >them (for $20/yr apiece? Hmm, $30K/yr for the registry may be the >motivation here). We're trying to build a gateway, not an empire. Good grief, John, what brought this on? I was trying to make some constructive comments, and I get this. I have never advocated geographic domains, I oppose them. ("Geographic" means things like "city within state within country" to me, what does it mean to you? Do you by any chance mean "topological"?) I never said FIDO should have 1500 private COM or ORG domains, either, although that may be one option to consider. I also never said that the UUCP project owns the name space and would charge FIDO to register in it. The UUCP Project only handles domains that use UUCP, or appear to use UUCP - we aren't even interested in handling FIDO. FIDO is a separate net, and if it will act like a separate net (responsible adult administration, for example) it could probably be a peer of the other US academic networks. This also assumes FIDO makes its own arrangements for Internet forwarding of mail. >What's wrong with grafting their naming system into the domain tree? It's certainly a possibility worth investigating, but it's not a given that it should be done that way. >> You can't just create a top level domain name like .FIDO, or even a >> 2nd level domain name like .FIDO.NET. You have to get the registrar >> of the parent domain to agree to it. You'll never get the NIC to create >> a top level FIDO domain, and they own the root. > >The NIC does not own the root; the NIC is *squatting* on the US root. >The NIC has no power over whether people use the .UK domain and has no >power over whether people use the .FIDO domain. What are they gonna >do, send the DoD after us with tanks? They may refuse to route mail to >.FIDO, but that's OK, they don't route mail to FidoNET right now, so >nobody is losing anything. I presume that pathalias can cope with Yet >Another Top Level Domain without trouble, so most uucp sites would be >able to talk to FidoNET. (Don't construe this paragraph to mean that I >like .FIDO addresses; I prefer FIDO.NET. But if the NIC won't let >us have FIDO.NET, we can always use .FIDO.) If you want to join the ARPA domain system, you have to play by the rules. (I don't make the rules, I just cooperate with them because I believe in them.) One of the key rules is that each domain has a registrar, and that registrar has final say about that domain. The registrar of the root is the NIC. If you decide to create a domain called .FIDO, without bothering to register it with the NIC (and convince them that it's a good idea), nobody is going to stop you, but that part of the world that only pays attention to officially registered domains won't talk to you. (UUCP is pretty liberal about who we'll talk to - see d.Top in the map for the long list of domains we recognize, many of which aren't real domains. Many other nets and hosts are much stricter.) If the responsible people running FIDO are seriously interested in joining the ARPA domain system, there is a meeting in Washington DC on April 27 they should be represented at. Contact me and I'll put you in touch with those at the NIC who set this up. >I suspect that if the NIC gets too high-handed about doling out the >domain address space in the US, that we can get somebody like NBS, >ANSI, or AT&T to do it in a more even-handed fashion. ("Gee, you >*want* to hook up your mail system with us? Good idea, let us know >what names you want" instead of "Grump grump, here, read these 1000 pages >of documentation and tell us your 5-year plan to convert to Our Way of >Doing Things -- then we'll consider it".) Where is it in the military >services' charter to control the domestic email address space? This is exactly what I expect to happen with X.400. If you want to get into the X.400 email game, go talk to these organizations, and someday something like this will be set up. (It's still a few years off, but my guess is NBS will do it.) Bodies like this can't be bothered with anything that isn't an international standard, they ignore ARPA and UUCP. And if you think the NIC is unreasonable about registrations (I don't know why you think so, you haven't even asked them) I'd love to see your face when you go to CCITT or NBS and ask for a top level domain called "FIDO". Mark
page@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) (04/24/87)
The answer seems simple enough from the outside. Have the NIC recognize
a FIDO zone (like a UUCP zone) to allow some administrative organization
to register domains into the existing namespace.
The parallel to UUCP is critical. UUCP uses a "non-standard" (non '@')
address format; so does FIDO. UUCP has set up an administrative entity
that processes requests to be added to the Internet namespace; FIDO can
do exactly the same thing. The addresses for UUCP-only hosts can look
just like a DDN address; and routing is not specified in the address.
There's no reason why FIDO-only hosts can't have the same thing.
I should _not_ know that the mail I just got from foo@bar.com is a site
on BITNET, ARPANET, MILNET, CSNET, UUCP, FIDO or anything else.
There is no UUCP.ORG for the UUCP network, and there should not be
a FIDO.ORG for the FIDO network.
As far as getting reasonable software on FIDO nodes to do the translation
between FIDO addresses and Internet (RFC822) addresses, that's FIDO's
problem, just as it is a problem for UUCP sites. There's no reason why
a FIDO node can't have an equivalent to 'uumail' or 'smail'.
As far as what to name the site, the problem on FIDO is the exact same
problem on UUCP. Hobbyists don't fit into the NICs scheme. Sites
like BYTE, branches of the US Govt, etc, should have no cause for alarm.
The hobbyist issue is a totally separate beast and should not be
covered in this discussion.
In the interim, have some sites act as UUCP/FIDO gateways, just like
we have published NETa/Netb gateways now. Sure the addressing will be
hairy for those that use the gateway, but I imagine that most FIDO
sites will quickly adopt RFC822 compliant software when it becomes
available (unlike many UUCP sites).
..Bob
--
Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept. page@ulowell.{uucp,edu,csnet}