🚀 go-pugleaf

In <fkc1Hr-8lb@atlantis.psu.edu> barr@pop.psu.edu (David Barr) writes:
>In article <V1L9VB3w165w@willard.UUCP> dawson@willard.UUCP (Willard Dawson) writes:
>>Hmmm... some site would need to advertise itself as a top-level server
>>for .UUCP?  Not likely, not for free?

Very unlikely.  Unless you could get a number of sites to start
doing it at the same time (then it's just "quite unlikely").

>>If the MX record for willard.UUCP were to indicate a path of
>>gatech.edu!vdbsan!willard!%s, or something similar, would that not still
>>route mail in the exact same way that UUNET would route mail otherwise?

>You're thinking UUCP again, Willard.

Yes, bzzt.  Unless someone wants to do some serious hacking on BIND (or
equivalent), the only way I can see to do this is either:
	* all mailers that ask the DNS about .UUCP. MXes send the
	  mail on to a randomly selected Internet->UUCP gateway.
	* Everyone in .UUCP. registers an MX with somebody.

The second option is pretty pointless.  If you're going to register,
you may as well use a real domain (eg in .US.), modulo concerns about
the US domain currently being strictly geographical.

As far as I know, the random selection will give a different MX for
each message, for sendmail and RFC-compliant MTAs.  Is this wrong?
There will be some sites which always pick the first MX which responds
before timeout (not very random), but are they more than say 10%?

>>What have I overlooked?

>The fact that you'd have to reconfigure the majority of mailers out there
>in order for it to work  (Remove CPUUCP from the sendmail.cf)

Your milage may vary depending on vendor, etc.  Not everyone uses "P".

It may not be necessary to do this though.  If a mailer can handle the
.UUCP "domain" intelligently now, there's no reason to change it.
I thought the idea was just to provide a "safety net" for mailers
which don't know what to do with mail for .UUCP.  Why flood the
(hypothetical) internet->uucp gateway(s)?

You've also overlooked the question of whether the Internet (with a
capital I) people would want to encourage anything which "legitimises"
the .UUCP (pseudo) domain.  I suspect the answer (at least from Inter-
net-centric people) may be "if you want your mail to work reliably,
go get a real domain name; if not, stop complaining".

Perhaps now would be a good time for Willard to tell us his tale of woe
regarding being in ".US."

-- 
<David.Keegel@apana.org.au>  <werple!tuple!boombox!djk>  Tel: +61 3 593-1460
aka: djk@boombox.apana.org.au, djk@cs.mu.oz.au.  Formerly: djk@bby.com.au.