[ih] Converging on MX use

[Craig Partridge]

OK, back story.  And yes, USENIX paper is the documentation.

RFC 974 was completed in November '85.  It was the product of some public
and some private email discussions after I discovered a bug in MD/MF RRs
(basically, Jon said "you found the bug, you fix it -- and I'll ask a few
folks to help you").  It was NOT a joint product of the various email
networks.

Jon delayed RFC 974's publication so that Paul Mockapetris could write up
RFC 973, which was a collection of updates to the DNS, including defining
the MX RR type and such.  I suspect Jon also wanted to see if the SRI
meeting changed anything in either Paul's or my draft RFCs.

The meeting in January was hosted by Jake Feinler and revolved around two
issues: (1) what should the top level domain names be?; and (2) what level
of interoperability could we get between the major email networks
(Internet, BITNET, CSNET, UUCP).  On email: UUCP was eager to reduce the
dependence on relative routes using ! -- and they had a routing tool
(written by Bellovin or Honeyman? can't recall who) that would enable
domain name usage.  CSNET was already committed to domain names.  BITNET
was interested but unsure how.  But we agreed to all make it work.  And RFC
976 by Horton, a month later (Feb 1986) starts to sketch how it would work
for UUCP.

Bits and pieces:

   - Part of what made the email interoperability feasible was that MX RRs
   made it easy to use the Internet as a backbone (UUCP didn't need the
   Internet to do that, but CSNET and BITNET to some degree did).  That was
   not accidental -- I worked for CSNET and so made sure MX would work for
   email relaying (indeed, it was an email relaying bug in MD/MF RRs that led
   to MX).  Also, Jon Crowcroft was on the informal team helping with me with
   RFC 974 and the UK had periodic mail outages (due to an overloaded SATNET)
   and an interest in gatewaying OSI email (kudos Steve Kille) and Jon had a
   good sense of what kind of relaying was needed.
   - On top-level domain names.  There were two issues (if I remember
   right).  First was the role of country codes and who would manage them --
   this turned out to be an argument about whether the administrator of .US
   would follow OSI naming conventions (Jon said no, in his polite and firm
   way).  Second was whether there should be a .NET for network administration
   (answer: yes).

Craig


On Thu, Feb 27, 2025 at 2:18 PM Dave Crocker <dhc at dcrocker.net> wrote:

> On 2/27/2025 12:54 PM, Craig Partridge wrote:
>
> There was a USENIX paper (Mail routing using domain names, an informal
> tour) by me in summer 1986 that discussed the mechanics.
>
> The meeting itself took place in January 1986 at SRI (two day meeting --
> the Challenger blew up on one of the two days).  Jake Feinler probably had
> someone produce meeting notes (Ole J. or Ken H.?).
>
> So, RFC 974 has a Jan 86 publication date. It does not include a
> 'contribution' section, indicating who worked on the doc. Was there
> multi-service collaboration?
>
> At the meeting in Jan 86, I assume the discussion was towards getting
> agreement and figuring out how to make this work.
>
> The Summer 1986 Usenix Tech conference has a presentation by you, "Mail
> Routing using Domain Names", covering the agreement by Internet, UUJCP,
> CSNet, and BITNET.  This looks to codify the mechanics.
>
> archive.org
>
> 1986 Summer USENIX Technical Conference & Exhibition Proceedings : USENIX
> Association : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
> <#m_5800662418406049934_>
>
> Summer Conference ProceedingsJune 9–13, 1986Atlanta, Georgia USA
>
> 🔗
> https://archive.org/details/1986-proceedings-summer-tech-atlanta/page/n9/mode/2up
> <https://archive.org/details/1986-proceedings-summer-tech-atlanta/page/n9/mode/2up>
>
>
>
> The description of 'internet' as 'a network of networks' seems to extend
> nicely to this accomplishment, of a mail service that is a network of mail
> services.  (But I'm glad 'intermail' did not catch on.)
>
> d/
>
> --
> Dave Crocker
>
> Brandenburg InternetWorkingbbiw.net
> bluesky: @dcrocker.bsky.social
> mast: @dcrocker at mastodon.social
>
>

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