jill@tank.uchicago.edu (jill holly hansen) (02/03/90)
This question has probably been asked many times, but please, I'm new
here.
I understand that the UUCP extension on addresses is obsolete. For
example, I can't respond to a posting from someone such as
xxx@whatever.UUCP without changing it to xxx@whatever.UU.net.
My question is simply, why do we continue to get UUCP extensions? Is
it the "whatever" machine's fault, or should my machine's copy of
inews or rn, etc. be able to change UUCP to something proper?
--
========================================================================
Jill Hansen | Can you imagine what this world be like
jill@tank.uchicago.edu | if God's operating system were Unix?tale@cs.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) (02/03/90)
In <7419@tank.uchicago.edu> jill@tank.uchicago.edu (jill holly hansen) writes: > I understand that the UUCP extension on addresses is obsolete. "Becoming obsolete" might be a better way of phrasing it. There is a strong move to geographically-specified site names but the .UUCP convention is still much too prevalent to consider it obsolete. (That is, you can consider a Sun 3/50 to be obsolete but they are still very widely used.) Geographically-specified names broken down first by country, then by state, province or other large political domain, then optionally by city or other regional name, and finally the machine name. These are specified in opposite order, such that The Well, which used to be (and still is somewhat) known as well.UUCP is now well.sf.ca.us. This name says that the site is in San Francisco, California, of the United States of America. > For example, I can't respond to a posting from someone such as > xxx@whatever.UUCP without changing it to xxx@whatever.UU.net. This is not quite right. That should only work for direct customers of UUNET. Of course that is a large number of sites, but it isn't all of them. > My question is simply, why do we continue to get UUCP extensions? Different reasons; one is that there are some (many?) UUCP sites out there that don't have registered domain names. For all I know about the maps (which isn't enough; I probably shouldn't even be posting this), all of the sites that are in the maps have geographical names which the regional map coordinators determined for them. Then again, this could just be my twisted view of the way I think it should be. > Is it the "whatever" machine's fault, or should my machine's copy of > inews or rn, etc. be able to change UUCP to something proper? It's the other machine's fault. We don't even run pathalias around Rensselaer because, to my knowledge, none of the departments do UUCP any more. It would be a fair bit of work to get us prepared to mutate other people's broken address headers for a form of transfer that we don't even use. I don't know how uchicago is set up, but it could be quite the same situation there. I just bounce my mail off of various gateways instead if I ever get a .UUCP address that bounces off my primary gateway. Unfortunately when I can't get to someone who lives down !dark!and!scary!unregistered!path!to!user I just give up after the first two bounces and moan to myself about how I wish things would work out better. Dave -- (setq mail '("tale@cs.rpi.edu" "tale@ai.mit.edu" "tale@rpitsmts.bitnet")) "Nice plant. Looks like a table cloth."
davidg@attctc.Dallas.TX.US (David Guntner) (02/03/90)
From article <V^3|J|@rpi.edu>, by tale@cs.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence): > In <7419@tank.uchicago.edu> jill@tank.uchicago.edu (jill holly hansen) writes: >> My question is simply, why do we continue to get UUCP extensions? > > Different reasons; one is that there are some (many?) UUCP sites out > there that don't have registered domain names. For all I know about > the maps (which isn't enough; I probably shouldn't even be posting > this), all of the sites that are in the maps have geographical names > which the regional map coordinators determined for them. Then again, > this could just be my twisted view of the way I think it should be. It's just your twisted view of the way you think it should be. :-) Being a registered site has nothing to do with your domain name. There are lots of domains out there, such as .cts.com, .edu, .gov, .csnet, and so on. These are all valid domains, and a registered site can be on any of them, including (for now, at least) the .uucp pseudo-domain. Being a registered site simply means that addressing information for smart mailer databases will be out there for other machines to be able to find you. If user "foo" is on site "bar", which is a registered site that's still using the .uucp domain, you wouldn't have to bang-path an address to him, you'd just send it to foo@bar.UUCP like normal. Your reference to the "geographical names" is not competely correct, either. The .US domain is available, but it has a drawback for non-Internet sites in that a non-Internet site must find someone on the Internet which will act as a forwarder (sort-of a "gateway", if you will). I don't think that there's any big "push" to get everyone onto that domain.... :-) --Dave -- David Guntner UUCP: {ames, mit-eddie}!attctc!davidg INET: davidg@attctc.Dallas.TX.US (killer) "...New ship, but she's got the right name. ...Treat --Admiral L. McCoy her like a lady, and she'll always bring you home." "Encounter at Farpoint"
eps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) (02/03/90)
In article <7419@tank.uchicago.edu> jill@tank.uchicago.edu (jill holly hansen) writes: >I understand that the UUCP extension on addresses is obsolete. For >example, I can't respond to a posting from someone such as >xxx@whatever.UUCP without changing it to xxx@whatever.UU.net. I'm not sure that's quite the right word for it. Domain names have certain advantages (they tend to get mail delivered to the right place). However, the Domain Name System is not designed to handle the kind of network (directed graph) .UUCP is. As has been pointed out, whatever.UU.NET is *not* the correct transformation. >My question is simply, why do we continue to get UUCP extensions? Is >it the "whatever" machine's fault, or should my machine's copy of >inews or rn, etc. be able to change UUCP to something proper? We use them because they are often the best representation. Converting everyone over to domain names would work if (1) everyone was one hop from an Internet site (2) the uucp community basically surrendered responsibility for long-haul traffic to the Internet, and (3) there was a guarantee that the Internet would basically absorb all uucp sites without imposing its own "reasonable use" constraints. The responsibility for doing somthing reasonable with .UUCP names is yours, but you can delegate it. We're not running pathalias (yet). Our mail system intercepts certain uucp names for sites that are also Internet sites, and turns them into Internet mail, properly routes a few high-volume paths (not "rabidly" and does not short-circuit anything), and hands anything it can't deal with to a site that can. -=EPS=-
peltz@cerl.uiuc.edu (Steve Peltz) (02/03/90)
In article <7419@tank.uchicago.edu> jill@tank.uchicago.edu (jill holly hansen) writes: >I understand that the UUCP extension on addresses is obsolete. For >example, I can't respond to a posting from someone such as >xxx@whatever.UUCP without changing it to xxx@whatever.UU.net. > >My question is simply, why do we continue to get UUCP extensions? Is >it the "whatever" machine's fault, or should my machine's copy of >inews or rn, etc. be able to change UUCP to something proper? My (somewhat limited) understanding is that your mailer, or the mailer that your mailer defaults to when it doesn't know the host you're sending to, should rewrite that address to be whatever!xxx@smart.host, where smart.host is some machine that DOES keep UUCP maps and can figure out where to send it on from there. All that .UUCP should mean is that the machine is not (yet) registered with a full domain name, and that it IS registered with the UUCP project. If there is a domain name, it ought to be using that instead of .UUCP, and if it isn't registered as a UUCP host, no one knows how to get to it (though you could probably figure out a route by looking at the return path that an article took to get to you). Wouldn't it be nice if you could say a magic word and everyone's mailers would instantly become compatible? -- Steve Peltz (almost) CFI-G Just say "NO" to drug testing. ---"Monticello traffic, Glider 949 landing 18, full stop"---
bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells) (02/04/90)
In article <7419@tank.uchicago.edu> jill@tank.uchicago.edu (jill holly hansen) writes:
: This question has probably been asked many times, but please, I'm new
: here.
That *is* what this newsgroup is for. :-)
: I understand that the UUCP extension on addresses is obsolete. For
: example, I can't respond to a posting from someone such as
: xxx@whatever.UUCP without changing it to xxx@whatever.UU.net.
This is only partly true. The .UUCP extension, as I understand
it, is an idea that failed. However, many people still use it.
There is quite a bit of pressure to eliminate the use of .UUCP,
but it isn't likely to disappear for some time.
Now, if you get an address of the form: xxx@whatever.UUCP, that
is supposed to mean that `whatever' has registered themselves in
the maps. (Actually, I believe that the original idea was that
they were known to someone designated as a uucp gateway, but I
think this is no longer true.) Accordingly, you can send mail to
`whatever' by sending it to some site that knows how to look
things up in the maps.
There are a number of possible ways to send off your mail if
xxx@whatever.UUCP doesn't work. You might try any of:
whatever!xxx
If your site knows how to route uucp mail.
...!<smart-site>!whatever!xxx
If your site can deal with uucp paths but won't generate them for
you. The ... is a path to <smart-site> and <smart-site> is a site
that knows how to finish the path for you. You get to find out
both a smart site and a route to it. (Ask your system
administrator. If you are the system administrator, you might ask
a system administrator of a site you are connected to.)
xxx%whatever@some.uucp.gateway
If you know of a uucp gateway that understands the % hack. The
following sites (from a cursory examination of the uucp maps)
advertise themselves as uucp gateways:
apple cornell decuac gatech harvard mcvax rutgers uunet
(Some of these I know the domain names for, e.g., apple.com,
rutgers.edu, uunet.uu.net. The others should not be hard to find,
if it matters. Of course, these might not understand the % hack.)
(Also, there may be a better way to specifically route mail
through an Internet site, but I don't know it, being a uucp only
site.)
I don't know if you should be using xxx@whatever.uu.net; I've
heard different things about it. On the one hand, they do
advertise themselves as a uucp gateway, so sending to
xxx%whatever@uunet.uu.net might be OK. On the other hand, uunet
is a commercial (though non-profit) site, so abuse of this might
make it go away. To be safe, unless you are a uucp site connected
to uunet or `whatever' is a uucp site connected to uunet, you may
want to avoid using uunet as a gateway.
: My question is simply, why do we continue to get UUCP extensions? Is
: it the "whatever" machine's fault, or should my machine's copy of
: inews or rn, etc. be able to change UUCP to something proper?
I would say that the most likely reason is that the site which
sent out the news is improperly configured. Rn (patch level 40
and below, I don't know about the latest patches) has the .UUCP
hard coded in it; many people are unaware of this and just let it
slip through. This may be the case for other bits of software as
well.
Accordingly, there is little you can do about the .UUCP stuff
except work around it. One thing you can do is to configure your
mail software to translate .UUCP on outgoing mail to whatever
works. But that is a topic for another newsgroup. (Which depends
on your mail software. Look in comp.mail.*.)
---
Bill { uunet | novavax | ankh } !twwells!bill
bill@twwells.combill@twwells.com (T. William Wells) (02/04/90)
In article <V^3|J|@rpi.edu> tale@cs.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) writes:
: "Becoming obsolete" might be a better way of phrasing it. There is a
: strong move to geographically-specified site names but the .UUCP
: convention is still much too prevalent to consider it obsolete.
More accurately, there is a strong push towards domain names of
some kind. The geographically specified names are just one kind
of name that is available. I am, for example, a .com site, even
though I am uucp only. What kind of name you choose depends on
your preferences.
: For all I know about
: the maps (which isn't enough; I probably shouldn't even be posting
: this), all of the sites that are in the maps have geographical names
: which the regional map coordinators determined for them. Then again,
: this could just be my twisted view of the way I think it should be.
That does not happen. To get such a name, you have to ask for it.
---
Bill { uunet | novavax | ankh } !twwells!bill
bill@twwells.combill@twwells.com (T. William Wells) (02/05/90)
I wrote:
: More accurately, there is a strong push towards domain names of
: some kind. The geographically specified names are just one kind
: of name that is available. I am, for example, a .com site, even
: though I am uucp only. What kind of name you choose depends on
: your preferences.
and received e-mail asking how a uucp only site could use a .com
name.
I'm writing the following from the standpoint of a site in the
USA; how things work in the rest of the world, I don't know.
There are two ways to legitimately use a domain name.
The obvious one is to become an Internet site. This is expensive.
Alternately, you can arrange for some Internet site to forward
your mail for you. Not being an Internet guru, I don't know the
mechanics, but the essential part is that someone has to provide
an "MX record" to the Internet which, presumably, tells the
Internet mail delivery software how to get the mail to you.
I, for example, have an MX with uunet; when someone tries to send
me mail, uunet responds with the appropriate information for
delivering it. In this case, my mail goes to uunet which then
routes it to me.
To use a domain name when you are not on the Internet, you have to
do two things: find someone willing to provide an MX record and
register with the Internet.
The easiest way to get an MX record is to become a uunet
subscriber. Alternately, you can try to hunt up an Internet site
that is willing to do it. I'd guess that posting to, say,
comp.mail.misc or possibly news.sysadmin might scare up someone.
I don't know the details of registering with the Internet; I had
it easy, being a uunet subscriber. All I did was ask them how to
register and they sent me a simple form to fill out.
Your best bet, if you want to get a domain name, is to send e-mail
to domain-request@uunet.uu.net (uunet!domain-request in uucp-land)
and ask them what to do next. I got this information from
comp.mail.maps, the README file, and so it should be OK to do
this even if you are not a uunet subscriber.
Last I checked, getting one of the geographically based names
involved a different registration process than getting .com-like
names, and one did not go through uunet to do it. I don't know if
that is still true.
---
Bill { uunet | novavax | ankh } !twwells!bill
bill@twwells.comeps@toaster.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) (02/06/90)
In article <1990Feb5.095936.19612@twwells.com> bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells) writes: >There are two ways to legitimately use a domain name. > >The obvious one is to become an Internet site. This is expensive. Expensive is a relative term. The latest issue of The Barrnetter newsletter describes BARRNET's revised rate schedule that permits small customers to become Internet sites for as little as $1200 per year (exclusive of necessary hardware). [BARRNET is the NSF midlevel network serving the San Francisco Bay Area; I don't know what the others are doing.] In any case, it's becoming increasingly affordable, although still out of reach of most individuals. >Last I checked, getting one of the geographically based names >involved a different registration process than getting .com-like >names, and one did not go through uunet to do it. I don't know if >that is still true. ----- For the USA only ----- It's actually handled by the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute. Send mail to the automated SERVICE@NIC.DDN.MIL with a Subject: line NETINFO US-DOMAIN.TXT for the whole scoop. (Unless you have FTP access; just retrieve NETINFO:US-DOMAIN.TXT from NIC.DDN.MIL.) The administrative contact for the .US domain is Ann Westine <westine@isi.edu>, +1 213 822 1511 -=EPS=-
tim@ncrcan.Toronto.NCR.COM (Tim Nelson) (02/07/90)
In article <1990Feb3.081741.23991@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> peltz@cerl.uiuc.edu (Steve Peltz) writes: >In article <7419@tank.uchicago.edu> jill@tank.uchicago.edu (jill holly hansen) writes: >>I understand that the UUCP extension on addresses is obsolete. For >>example, I can't respond to a posting from someone such as >>xxx@whatever.UUCP without changing it to xxx@whatever.UU.net. >> ... [stuff deleted] ... > >All that .UUCP should mean is that the machine is not (yet) registered with >a full domain name, and that it IS registered with the UUCP project. If there >is a domain name, it ought to be using that instead of .UUCP, and if it isn't >registered as a UUCP host, no one knows how to get to it (though you could >probably figure out a route by looking at the return path that an article >took to get to you). Ok, maybe I don't understand something here. I have the following addresses: tim.nelson@toronto.ncr.com, tim@ncrcan.uucp, and ...!uunet!attcan!ncrcan!tim What is the "full domain name" which you are talking about? Is it "toronto.ncr.com"? Although that is our subdomain, ncr.com being the domain. It was my understanding that this is our internet address; although (again one of those repeated words 8) we are not connected to internet, you can see that we have forwarding through RELAY.CSNET (I believe). Will or is it a uucp project to have domain names in the internet format, or will they be some other unique format? And besides all that, why is it that a when a friend of mine sends me e-mail using the uucp address, I receive it in as little as an hour while it takes usually 1 to 2 days when using the internet address? (damned if I know) Finally, I am looking for a text(s) in order to increase my knowledge greatly in the are of usenet, and e-mail in general, as I am supposedly the (pseudo) second most knowledgeable person in our group regarding e-mail/usenet/internet. (thank goodness I am not THE most knowledgeable) Does anyone have any pointers? Perhaps documentation available from some mail server or another? any help would be appreciated, (don't forget that you can e-mail to me instead of posting) thanx & later, ===== tim nelson | uucp ...!uunet!attcan!ncrcan!tim ncr canada | internet Tim.Nelson@Toronto.NCR.COM (416) 826-9000 | 6865 Century Ave, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5N 2E2 ===== * Have a good day, and a great forever! * What?
davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) (02/07/90)
In article <301@toaster.SFSU.EDU> eps@cs.SFSU.EDU (Eric P. Scott) writes: | Expensive is a relative term. The latest issue of The Barrnetter | newsletter describes BARRNET's revised rate schedule that permits | small customers to become Internet sites for as little as $1200 | per year (exclusive of necessary hardware). If you can get an internet site to be your mail forwarder, uunet will register you for $35. This will *not* put you on internet, but will give you a valid internet address and mail connection. -- bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen) "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me
dmcgrego@cs.strath.ac.uk (David J McGregor IE88) (02/16/90)
Hello there. I'm new around here (but I guess nearly everyone who writes to this newsgroup must be) and I'm having a bit of a problem trying to get in contact with a particular student at Aberdeen University. As far as I know, Aberdeen University is on the net as abdn.ac.uk, but I've had endless hours of rather exasperating toil trying to get in contact with this student - or indeed, anyone at all - at this University. Can anyone who knows more about this than I do (and there must be quite a few!) please help by sending me some useful tips/guidelines or whatever in how to achieve this. Does one have to pay a lot of money to send anything? Is that the reason why any mail I try to send there ends up coming back undelivered? Any help or suggestions would be most appreciated. J. At least my signature turned out ri