[ih] bang paths, was Domain Names

[Larry Sheldon]

On 1/20/2010 11:59 PM, Marty Lyons wrote:
>
> On Jan 20, 2010, at 2:55 PM, Dave CROCKER wrote:
>
>> On 1/20/2010 8:37 AM, Craig Partridge wrote:
>>> The assimilation of USENET (and CSNET and to a lesser degree
>>> BITNET) into ARPANET was intentionally enabled...
>>
>> Each of these had their own syntax.
[snip]

> The "well known" gateways were also well-connected and on multiple
> networks.   Typically they had mailers which could reliably parse
> addresses, rewrite headers as needed, and get mail moving on to the
> next hop.    Manually routed mail could use the percent routing hack,
> quoted components, source routing, or weird combinations of all of
> them at once.    It was really pretty amazing some of the stuff that
> would work.  Lots of people in that era became sendmail wizards
> (often against their will!).  On any given network, people knew the
> host of last resort by heart... you'd hear lots of "just send it to
> (ucbvax, wiscvm, ihnp4), they can probably get it there".
>
> A whacky example: Mail from a MAILNET connected host to someone
> inside DEC (routed via their UUCP connection):
> "rutgers!decvax!decwrl!KYOA::USER"%rutgers.arpa at mit-multics.mailnet

By the time we (Creighton) got on NSFNET (Midnet) sendmail knew about 
gateways to commercial networks like COMPUSERVE, although I don't 
remember what the hack was to get the comma (for example) through. 
There were also gateways to FIDONET and the hams packet radio as I recall.

And when I left in 2003, at least one of our client parochial schools 
used UUCP between our network and their Apple network.

[snip]

> On a related topic: People had lots of fun on internal networks
> coming up with host naming schemes.   It was one of the best parts
> about being the systems person.  I recall MIT has breakfast cereals
> for awhile (MIT-RICECHEX).  Rutgers main machines were colors
> (RU-RED, RU-BLUE, RU-GREEN).  When I set up the namespace at South
> Pole Station, all the hosts were named after the one thing you'd
> never see: trees.

When I left, we were still naming most of the centrally-managed machines 
(and so did a lot of the departments) after birds.  It turns out that 
you run out of bird names that will fit in the unix standard a lot 
quicker than you might think.  (This house used to be on the 
University's network--this machine is "Hummimngbird" and the ones 
downstairs are "Chickadee" and "Nuthatch".)

-- 
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to
take everything you have."

Remember:  The Ark was built by amateurs, the Titanic by professionals.

Requiescas in pace o email
Ex turpi causa non oritur actio
Eppure si rinfresca

ICBM Targeting Information:  http://tinyurl.com/4sqczs
http://tinyurl.com/7tp8ml