forrest@ucsbcsl.UUCP ( ) (11/29/84)
In my posting called Unix Bugs vs. VMS Bugs I deliberately stayed away from technical differences between Unix and VMS, although some of the people who responded didn't follow suit. In this posting I'm not staying away from the technical differences between Unix and VMS. I want to discuss something that has caused me much grief in my attempts to reply to people who have sent me responses to my postings. This problem is the absence of routing by the mail system. Even though I'm a VMS manager, I'm just a Unix user. I don't have the same technical knowledge of Unix that a Unix manager has and, what's more, I don't want it. On Unix I want to be a user like everyone else. Therefore, I don't think its unreasonable to expect that when I get mail from someone, I should be able to fire up the reply option of mail and know that my response will get to them. After all, their message got to me OK. Most of the time, when I do this I get a message from some program (you never know on Unix where messages come from) telling me that the destination was unreachable. This is after I spent valuable time creating a message whose wit and insite would completely overwhelm (sp?) the person who is to receive it. On VMS I know as soon as I get the prompt for Subject that the destination is reachable. In my ignorance I may be doing something wrong. If so please correct me. Otherwise, I wonder if Unix is really the networking system is claimed to be. I mean this posting as constructive critism.
henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (12/03/84)
> ... Most of the time, when I do this I get a message from > some program (you never know on Unix where messages come from) telling > me that the destination was unreachable. ... > > ... On VMS I know as > soon as I get the prompt for Subject that the destination is reachable. Welcome to the world of real networking, where one cannot assume that a specific program (your mailer) on a specific machine (your host) knows everything about the network. "It just ain't that simple no more." -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>) (12/05/84)
The only standard mail facility on UNIX supports mail to the local users and via UUCP (onehost!another!whoever) but that is all. The USENET is UUCP-based and has several independent, not fully correct, message handling programs. Many of the people contributing to the newsgroups are on a non-UUCP network such as BITNET, CSNET, or MILNET/ ARPANET. Net addresses for such folks are totally foreign to standard UNIX mail facilities, and even the extended message/news handlers have trouble at times sending mail across different networks. The Internet concept is supposed to provide a "global" network addressing scheme, but until there is a UUCP domain name server USENET will not conform to the Internet protocols. The situation is not much different from VMS (which can speak DECNET and some Internet); the problem shows up more strongly in the UNIX world since the UNIX system is running in so many different networking environments.
root%bostonu.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA (12/09/84)
If you mean that VAX MAIL under VMS using DECNET is more reliable in its routing it is because it encompasses a trivial network, what do you have? 5 or 10 VMS/VAXes on a single simple spine or point-point? Anyone can solve networking as long as they limit the problem enough which is largely what decnet does. When you have hundreds, maybe thousands of nodes with no centralized administrative control (as you would need with decnet) the problem does indeed become a trade off of don't do it at all or do the best you can and get the bugs out over time. The extended UUCP link networks are indeed a major problem, address authentication is nearly impossible unless you had the entire network topology in your machine (a topology that seems to change every few minutes.) You are right, it should be fixed (that's easy to say.) However, if given the choice between no connectivity until it is perfect and most connectivity and some bugs I'll take the latter any day, even with some serious routing bugs. I think people that want wall-wall carpeted condos should stay away from the frontiers...it's not as safe out there. No one forces you do they? -Barry Shein, Boston University Gee, I hope this makes it but i DID save a copy via ~e
ron@BRL-TGR.ARPA (12/12/84)
UNIX talks acrross many different types of network. Unfortuately VMS does this very poorly. While UUCP mail and DDN (ARPANET, etc..) and several other mail systems are moving towards a unified approach to addressing, it isn't there yet. VMS would have exactly the same problem if it were dealing with as a diverse environment as UNIX systems. -Ron