Handling paths to ambiguous hosts

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2 total messages Started by Matt Costello Fri, 20 Mar 1987 04:40

#4099

Author: Matt Costello
Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1987 04:40

47 lines
2583 bytes

I've come across a problem with deciphering a standard UUCP path
such as
	comet!fred

The problem is described here in a theoretical manner, but I have just
run into it at ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM.  At the current time it only
affects the uupath command, so it is not serious, but it should become
increasingly common as private hosts proliferate.

Assume that our (mythical) host communicates with the following three hosts:
	comet.UUCP		using UUCP
	comet.SanDiego.NCR.COM	using XNS across an ethernet
	comet.ames.arg.nasa.gov	using SMTP

When given the address/path in one of the following forms
	comet.uucp!fred
	comet.sandiego.ncr.com!fred
	comet.ames.arg.nasa.gov!fred
	fred@comet		# qualified into our domain
	fred@comet.uucp

we know exactly which host the address refers to, so everything is just
fine.  But what can be do when some poor fool gives us the address

	comet!fred

Which of the three hosts does this "comet" refer to?  One simple
solution is to say "none of the above".  What we have been doing is
assuming that comet.uucp is the correct host, partly because this is
the uucp addressing mechanism, and partly because it just ended up
this way.  The problem now is that the "comet" must actually be
comet.sandiego.ncr.com since it is in our domain.  In addition, the
general manager will get somewhat annoyed if his mail is delivered
to Oregon.

The only solution that I've come up with is to build a database that
maps the simple host names we communicate with to the fully qualified
domain name of the host the mail should be delivered to.  This
database would be used for simple hostnames in paths and nothing else.

Does anybody have a better solution?  I'd also be very interested to
hear from anybody who has run into this problem and what they did
about it.
-- 
Matt Costello	<matt.costello@SanDiego.NCR.COM>
		{sdcsvax,cbatt,dcdwest,nosc.ARPA,ihnp4}!ncr-sd!matt

Re: Handling paths to ambiguous hosts

#4101

Author: hmm
Date: Sat, 21 Mar 1987 15:16

9 lines
1021 bytes

The most reasonable thing to do is to assume uucp for bang addresses.
xyz!user is ONLY a valid addres in the uucp domain.  If someone wants
to address a host in another domain, he should use user@xyz or user@xyz.domain.
Adding a database which maps every simple name into a fully qualified address
makes things unnecessarily complicated both for the administrator and the
poor users.

	Hans-Martin Mosner
D

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