jessea@dynasys.UUCP (Jesse W. Asher) (03/06/90)
I recently posted an article asking why I couldn't use domains without
registering. The more I find out about this, the less convinced I am
of the greatness of domains. Question: Why in the world would I want
to have mail sent to another site just so that site could send it to
me? If, for example, my domain is "dynasys.com", what is the advantage
of having my mail sent to the entity that takes care of the "com" domain
only to then be sent to me? Especially when we have smart mailers that
will route the stuff directly to me. After reading the RFC and asking
all these questions, domains do not seem to be the great thing that many
are making them out to be. Comments?
--
Jesse W. Asher - Dynasys - (901)382-1705 Evening: (901)382-1609
6196-1 Macon Rd., Suite 200, Memphis, TN 38134
UUCP: {uunet,fedeva,rayo}!dynasys!jesseackd@bu-pub.bu.edu (Christopher Davis) (03/06/90)
>>>>> On 6 Mar 90 02:01:11 GMT, jessea@dynasys.UUCP (Jesse W. Asher) said: > [...] The more I find out about this, the less convinced I am of the > greatness of domains. Question: Why in the world would I want to have > mail sent to another site just so that site could send it to me? > If, for example, my domain is "dynasys.com", what is the advantage of > having my mail sent to the entity that takes care of the "com" domain > only to then be sent to me? Especially when we have smart mailers that > will route the stuff directly to me. After reading the RFC and asking > all these questions, domains do not seem to be the great thing that many > are making them out to be. Comments? This seems to be a misinterpretation of how the DNS MX record is handled. The advantage here is that sites using DNS (we will, for the moment, ignore UUCP pathalias/comp.mail.maps style routing) do a lookup, get an MX, then send the mail *over the Internet* to that MX. Example: Bill Well's machine, twwells.com: Script started on Tue Mar 6 06:38:59 1990 6:39am ckd@bass : ~ % nslookup Default Server: BU-PUB.BU.EDU Address: 128.197.21.21 [...] > twwells.com Server: uunet.uu.net Address: 192.48.96.2 twwells.com origin = uunet.UU.NET mail addr = postmaster.uunet.UU.NET serial=900228, refresh=432000, retry=3600, expire=864000, min=172800 twwells.com server name = uunet.UU.NET twwells.com server name = seismo.CSS.GOV twwells.com preference = 200, mail exchanger = uunet.uu.net uunet.UU.NET inet address = 192.48.96.2 uunet.UU.NET inet address = 137.39.1.2 seismo.CSS.GOV inet address = 192.12.141.25 [...] script done on Tue Mar 6 06:39:51 1990 The magic part is the line reading: twwells.com preference = 200, mail exchanger = uunet.uu.net which means that my mailer will send mail for user@twwells.com to uunet.uu.net through the Internet, and uunet can then arrange to get it to you. Otherwise, I might have to use twwells!user@uunet.uu.net, or user%twwells.uucp@uunet.uu.net, or other strange and arcane mutterings, just to get mail through to you. Mail does not go to "the entity that takes care of the 'com' domain" (namely nic.ddn.mil)--they just register your domain so nobody else gets it. (Imagine if Boston U, Brown U, and Bucknell U all used "bu.edu"...) Naturally, NONE of this applies outside the DNS (in particular, none of this applies to sites using comp.mail.maps for routing). -- Christopher Davis, BU SMG '90 <ckd@bu-pub.bu.edu> <smghy6c@buacca.bitnet> "Basic upshot - get your science straight, or start getting used to the taste of your Nikes." --Siobahn Morgan, thebang@blake.acs.washington.edu
roy@phri.nyu.edu (Roy Smith) (03/06/90)
In article <75@dynasys.UUCP> jessea@dynasys.UUCP (Jesse W. Asher) writes: > Question: Why in the world would I want to have mail sent to another > site just so that site could send it to me? If, for example, my domain > is "dynasys.com", what is the advantage of having my mail sent to the > entity that takes care of the "com" domain only to then be sent to me? One common confusion (and I admit, I was confused by this myself) is that domain names, IP addresses, and mail paths are all, at least in the general sense, orthagonal concepts. There is no reason why, just because you are a top-level .com domain that the .com nameserver has to have anything to do with your mail other than handing out your nameserver resource records (RRs) to anybody who asks for them. Imagine the following. I've got a bunch of machines with names of xx.phri.nyu.edu. They all happen to be on the same ethernet, with IP addresses of 128.122.136.xx, but that doesn't mean anything. In fact, there is a machine on my ethernet with a 128.122.136.xx which isn't in the phri.nyu.edu domain. Now, let's say I set up a machine at home. It's owned by phri, and used for phri business, so we decide it should have a phri name. We call it foo.phri.nyu.edu. It's not on the Internet, but does have a uucp link to phrivax.phri.nyu.edu. We just have to install an MX record saying that phrivax.phri.nyu.edu is where you should send mail for foo.phri.nyu.edu. Now, lets say that the phone call involved in that would be long distance and I'd rather not pay those bills, and there just happens to be a site on the Internet, say bozo.com, down the street from me that is willing to set up a uucp link to me and be my mail exchanger. Fine, we take out the MX record described earlier and put in one saying that bozo.com is now the mail exchanger for foo.phri.nyu.edu. -- Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016 roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy "My karma ran over my dogma"
lyndon@cs.AthabascaU.CA (Lyndon Nerenberg) (03/07/90)
In article <75@dynasys.UUCP> jessea@dynasys.UUCP (Jesse W. Asher) writes: >Question: Why in the world would I want >to have mail sent to another site just so that site could send it to >me? If, for example, my domain is "dynasys.com", what is the advantage >of having my mail sent to the entity that takes care of the "com" domain >only to then be sent to me? That's not what happens. If the site is an internet site, and you have an internet forwarder, mail for your domain originating at an internet site will go directly to your forwarder (one hop in most cases) who will forward it (via uucp presumably) to your domain gateway. For example, .AthabascaU.CA is not connected to the internet. Our internet forwarder is decwrl.dec.com. They advertise an MX record for our domain, so any internet mail is sent there. Our gateway polls them to pick up our mail. I would guess our average hop count for mail from internet sites is around 2.5 by the time it gets to decwrl. For uucp sites running pathalias and a smart router, they will pick up a route to your domain via the map data. Again, an example. Our uucp fateway for AthabascaU.CA is a machine known as atha. If your routing database is set up properly, any mail you send to foo.athabascau.ca will route ...!atha!foo.athabascau.ca. Bitnet has similar provisions for gatewaying, as does CDNnet and most (but not all) other "networks." If a host is on both the Internet and the UUCP network, it's their decision as to which routing match takes precedence. Most favour the internet, since it provides much faster delivery to the end point (gateway) machine. -- Lyndon Nerenberg VE6BBM / Computing Services / Athabasca University {alberta,decwrl}!atha!lyndon || lyndon@cs.AthabascaU.CA UREP: Peru in disguise?
cjsv@cs.adfa.oz.au (Christopher JS Vance) (03/07/90)
In article <75@dynasys.UUCP> jessea@dynasys.UUCP (Jesse W. Asher) writes:
.> Question: Why in the world would I want
.> to have mail sent to another site just so that site could send it to
.> me? If, for example, my domain is "dynasys.com", what is the advantage
.> of having my mail sent to the entity that takes care of the "com" domain
.> only to then be sent to me?
You've missed the point -- your mail does not *go* to the entity
managing .COM, but an Internet site will *ask* the entity managing .COM
where your mail should be sent (unless it already knows). Since the
Internet site is permanently connected to the name server for .COM, it
will get an immediate answer (assuming everything's working :-)), and
wil then send your mail to the (other) Internet site which is nominated
as your MX forwarder. It's not a roundabout thing, but the best that
can be done, since you can't expect an Internet site to know anything
but Internet routing. Your MX forwarder is then responsible for getting
your mail to you using whatever means your have agreed with them.
In fact, your mail is *more* likely to make hops to several sites on the
way (rather than going directly) if you use UUCP.
.> Especially when we have smart mailers that
.> will route the stuff directly to me.
And how does the smart mailer know how to route stuff to you? Somebody
has to *tell* it how to get to you. The UUCP maps are one way, but
nobody on the Internet can be expected to even look at them. The other
way is to have a registered domain, an MX forwarder on the Internet, and
an agreement with your forwarder how they should forward your mail. But
then, nobody *off* the Internet can be expected to use your MX
information.
The best way is to register your domain officially, get an MX forwarder,
and then (*only then*) put your domain information into the UUCP maps. That
way people in both worlds can talk to you and use the same address for you.
.> After reading the RFC and asking
.> all these questions, domains do not seem to be the great thing that many
.> are making them out to be.
The whole point of domains is to reduce the amount of information needed
to work out how to get to you. Last time I checked, there were about
26000 records in 37 top level Internet domains, which doesn't include
any detail internal to second or lower level domains -- e.g., we know
UU.NET exists, but not what's inside that domain, and certainly not any
detail about UUNET.UU.NET. There are too many machines around to use
anything *but* domains. Besides, if everyone had to choose a name
unique in 7 or 8 characters, rather than using domains, you'd probably
have to call yourself g6h4fyq instead of dynasys, since that name would
have been gone a long time ago.
Would you like to have to wade through a single telephone directory for the
whole of North America because the Phone Company decided to make everybody
use 10-digit dialling and to stop treating your Area Code as a domain?
--
Christophermichaelb@wshb.UUCP ( WSHB Operations Eng) (03/10/90)
> The best way is to register your domain officially, get an MX forwarder, > and then (*only then*) put your domain information into the UUCP maps. That > way people in both worlds can talk to you and use the same address for you. Several months ago I started to look into getting a domain name for our company. As I was the only site trying to communicate with the outside world at that time, I didn't follw up when I couldn't make my mailer take domain names. Well, things are on a roll now. My corporate headquarters, which also has no experience in this, is adding a dial-up line for me to call in with uucp. And I'm going to put two more systems at remote sites I want to connect with using uucp. Things weren't to bad when I needed to send things to a handful if sites through uunet, but because I can see that soon everyone in the company is going to want worldwide e-mail with easy names I want to get away from long bang paths associated with uucp. It seems I MUST get everyone using a mailer which understands domains (or find out how to fix mine) and then register a name so everyone else in the world can find us. But I don't know where to start. I currently have SCO XENIX 2.3.2 with the stock mail system. I can create aliases for the mailer, but didn't consider it a workable solution to use for the whole uucp maps. (I don't know how to use the maps anyway.) Besides, just fixing the mailer to understand the uucp maps won't make it recognize domains. What I'm looking for , then, is advice on where to start moving us down the correct road. If I need to replace the mail subsystem, which version is available (for free) that understands domains and the uucp maps? What other changes am I probably going to have to make in my system? Will I need to add something besides uucp as a transport mechanism? If so, what? Thakns for any advice. Michael -- Michael Batchelor--Systems/Operations Engineer #compliments and complaints WSHB - An International Broadcast Station of #...!uunet!wshb!letterbox The Christian Science Monitor Syndicate, Inc. #technical questions and reports uunet!wshb!michaelb +1 803 625 4880 #...!uunet!wshb!letterbox-tech
david@actsn.fay.ar.us (David Summers) (03/11/90)
In article <570@wshb.UUCP>, michaelb@wshb.UUCP ( WSHB Operations Eng) writes: > > The best way is to register your domain officially, get an MX forwarder, > > and then (*only then*) put your domain information into the UUCP maps. That > > way people in both worlds can talk to you and use the same address for you. > [ ... deleted ... ] > > [...] It seems I MUST get everyone using a mailer > which understands domains (or find out how to fix mine) and then register > a name so everyone else in the world can find us. But I don't know where > to start. > > I currently have SCO XENIX 2.3.2 with the stock mail system. > [ ... deleted ... ] > Besides, just fixing the mailer to understand the uucp maps won't make it > recognize domains. > > [ ... deleted ... ] > Thakns for any advice. > > Michael > -- > Michael Batchelor--Systems/Operations Engineer #compliments and complaints > WSHB - An International Broadcast Station of #...!uunet!wshb!letterbox > The Christian Science Monitor Syndicate, Inc. #technical questions and reports > uunet!wshb!michaelb +1 803 625 4880 #...!uunet!wshb!letterbox-tech Why not just use the Sendmail 5.61 + IDA 1.2.8 extensions? It comes with a fairly sophisticated sendmail.cf configuration file that tries to handle all (even mangled) address. It allows the IMHO very important feature of being able to combine the Domain Name Server (if you are on the internet) with the UUCP Maps and correctly goes about looking up the way to get mail to the destination in the face of multiple networks (UUCP, Internet, etc.). And best of all, it is FREE! I was able to get the same version working on a Harris HCX-3.0 and my SCO Xenix 2.3.1. Very soon I will also have it working on AT&T 3B2 SysV R 3.1 at school. It does what I've been trying to find out how to do for 2 years...combine InterNet and UUCP addressing correctly. If you want to pick it up, then just FTP to 'uafcseg.uark.edu' and find it in one of the unix sub-directories (I forget which one right now). If you can't FTP then I can make arrangements to pick it up other ways. ** To people who replied to my earlier announcement of Sendmail availability ** Sorry for the problems you expirienced. Somehow I didn't get a correctly tar'ed and compress'ed file to 'uafcseg'. This HAS BEEN FIXED NOW! I will try to reply to everyone who e-mailed me as soon as I have a chance. Our IP address is 130.184.64.202 in case you don't use the DNS. - David Summers -- David Summers "Be Original! Drink Dr. Pepper like everyone else!" (David.Summers@actsn.fay.ar.us)
clay@uci.mn.org (Clayton Haapala) (03/12/90)
In article <570@wshb.UUCP> michaelb@wshb.UUCP ( WSHB Operations Eng) writes: >I currently have SCO XENIX 2.3.2 with the stock mail system. I can create ... >What I'm looking for , then, is advice on where to start moving us down the >correct road. If I need to replace the mail subsystem, which version is >available (for free) that understands domains and the uucp maps? What >other changes am I probably going to have to make in my system? Will I need >to add something besides uucp as a transport mechanism? If so, what? > > >Thakns for any advice. > >Michael I'm Running Xenix 2.3.2 at home. I use Elm for a mailer, and smail 2.5 for my transport, along with pathalias to understand uucp maps. I also use Deliver, but that doesn't apply to your mail transport problems. Smail understands bang paths, user@host paths, etc. etc. (Patches for Smail under XENIX by Chip Salzenberg are available -- I'll send them to you if they don't come with your smail distribution.) The key to uucp mail success is to find a "smart-host" who understands all the uucp maps. If your organization is large enough, you should probably take the time to set that up for yourself, eventually. Anyway, if you find a cooperative host site, you will then be in his administrative "domain". For example, my company UCI is in a "domain park" in the Minnesota region called "MN.ORG". This is a uucp domain, not an Internet domain. So my address here is clay@uci.mn.org. My machine at home is not registered in MN.ORG, but is known to UCI, so there I am clay@haapi.uci.mn.org. The bang path for home would be ...bungia!uci!haapi!clay. A friend of mine uses haapi for his mail router (I'm his "smart-host", like uci is mine), but we decided to leave him under UCI's administration, so his address is friend@frndhost.uci.mn.org. You see that domain names looks like routes, but it doesn't have to be so. A central mail machine in MN.ORG (bungia) has access to the Internet, and provides a gateway from our uucp domain to the Internet. This machine is most peoples "smart-host", but some of us keep track of all the maps, anyway. So, you need to get smail to upgrade your transport to understand the more complex routing, find a better-connected site that can do the maps for you and possibly connect your mail to the internet, and you'll be in business. We have it easy in Minnesota -- not too many places have such a nice informal organization in place. I hope this helps some. -- Clayton Haapala ...!bungia!uci!clay (clay@uci.uci.com) Unified Communications Inc. "Every morning I get in the Queue. 3001 Metro Drive - Suite 500 'n get on the Bus that takes me to you." Bloomington, MN 55425 -- the Who
michaelb@wshb.UUCP ( WSHB Operations Eng) (03/21/90)
In article <1990Mar11.224131.24230@uci.mn.org>, clay@uci.mn.org (Clayton Haapala) writes: > In article <570@wshb.UUCP> michaelb@wshb.UUCP ( WSHB Operations Eng) writes: > >I currently have SCO XENIX 2.3.2 with the stock mail system. I can create > ... > >What I'm looking for , then, is advice on where to start moving us down the > >correct road. If I need to replace the mail subsystem, which version is > >available (for free) that understands domains and the uucp maps? What > >other changes am I probably going to have to make in my system? Will I need > >to add something besides uucp as a transport mechanism? If so, what? > > > > > >Thakns for any advice. > > > >Michael > > I'm Running Xenix 2.3.2 at home. I use Elm for a mailer, and smail 2.5 for my > transport, along with pathalias to understand uucp maps. I also use Deliver, > but that doesn't apply to your mail transport problems. Smail understands > bang paths, user@host paths, etc. etc. First of all, thanks to everyone for the help. But I'm a bit more confused now than I was before. I've gotten the sources for smail and looked at the docs. I also got the sources for sendmail and looked at the docs. There seems to be overlap in what they do. I noticed in the smail docs that can work in conjunction with sendmail. Should I go to the trouble to install both? A couple of people have ask about the size and scope of my organization and how much connectivity I'm looking for. My site is two 386 boxes with SCO XENIX 2.3.2 with oly one box visible to the outside world. Two more sites, one in Maine and one on Saipan in the Pacific, will be converting from MS-DOS to XENIX in the next few months. I will connect to both of these through uucp. My corporate headquarters is a VAX cluster which I will be connecting to with uucp as soon as they get VMS/UUCP up and running (4 weeks?) That VAX cluster may wind up connected to me over a leased line by the end of the year. It is also connected, via DECNET, to a cluster in Washington, D.C., a VAX in London, a VAX in Tokyo, and a couple of machines whose locations I don't know. Right now we have e-mail via DECNET amoung the VAXs with no outside connections. This all started as a project to get e-mail between my XENIX sites and the VAX cluster in Boston, all of them routing through me. That is still the main goal. Some people on the VAXs are aware of my connections to the outside and want to start using them when we get rolling. What I'm trying to avoid is having people from all over the organization ask me to convert everything to a bang path for them. I want a nice clean system which follows all the standards. (And less of a nightmare when I get a phone call telling me to convert to X.400 mail. Come to think of it, maybe I should be planning to convert to X.400 first. Is anything, commercial or free, available yet.) Does any of this change the nature of what I should be looking at? Michael -- Michael Batchelor--Systems/Operations Engineer #compliments and complaints WSHB - An International Broadcast Station of #...!uunet!wshb!letterbox The Christian Science Monitor Syndicate, Inc. #technical questions and reports uunet!wshb!michaelb +1 803 625 4880 #...!uunet!wshb!letterbox-tech