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mail service. The UUCP mail network proper developed from the early networks
and spread as the UUCP programs were distributed as part of the Unix system.
Remote command execution can be made to work over successive links by
arranging for each job in the chain to submit the next one. There are several
programs that do this: Unfortunately, they are all incompatible. There is no
facility at the transport level for routing beyond adjacent systems or for
error acknowledgement. All routing and end-to-end reliability support is done
explicitly by application protocols implemented using the remote command
execution facility. There has never been any remote login facility associated
with UUCP, though the cu and tip programs are sometimes used over the same
telephone links.
The UUCP mail network connects a very diverse set of machines and users.
Most of the host machines run the UNIX operating system. Mail is the only
service provided throughout the network. In addition to the usual uses of
mail, much traffic is generated as responses to USENET news. The same
underlying UUCP transport mechanisms are also used to support much
of USENET.
The UUCP mail network has many problems with routing (it is one of the few
major networks that uses source routing) and with its scale. Nonetheless, it
is extremely popular and still growing rapidly. This is attributable to three
circumstances: ease of connection, low cost, and its close relationship with
the USENET news network.
Mailing lists similar to those long current on the ARPANET have recently
increased in popularity on the UUCP mail network. These permit a feature that
USENET newsgroups cannot readily supply: a limitation on access on a
per-person basis. Also, for low-traffic discussions mailing lists are more
economical, since traffic can be directed to individuals according to their
specific interests.
There is no central administration. To connect to the network, one need
only find one machine that will agree to be a neighbor. For people at other
hosts to be able to find your host, however, it is good to be registered in
the UUCP map, which is kept by the group of volunteers known as the UUCP
Project. The map is posted monthly in the USENET newsgroup "comp.mail.maps".
There is a directory of personal addresses on the UUCP network, although this
is a commercial venture unrelated to the UUCP Project.
Each host pays for it's own links; some hosts encourage others to connect
to them in order to shorten mail delivery paths.
There is no clear distinction between transport and network layers in UUCP,
and there is nothing resembling an Internet Protocol. The details of the
transport protocol are undocumented (apparently not actually proprietary to
AT&T, contrary to rumor, though the source code that implements the protocol
and is distributed with UNIX is AT&T's trade secret).
Mail is transferred by submitting a mail command over a direct connection
by the UUCP remote command execution mechanism. The arguments of the mail
command indicate whether the mail is to be delivered locally on that system
or resubmitted to another system. In the early days, it was necessary to
guess the route to a given host and hope. The only method of acknowledgment
was to ask the addressee to reply. Now there is a program (pathalias) that
can compute reasonable routes from the UUCP map, and there is software that
can automatically look up those routes for users.
The UUCP mail network is currently supported in North America mostly by
dial-up telephone links. In Europe there is a closely associated network
called EUnet, and in Japan there is JUNET.
The most common dial-up link speed on the UUCP mail network is 1,200 bps
though there are still a few 300-bps links, and 2,400 bps is becoming
more popular. Actually, now I believe that 1200-bps is still very common,
but 2400 may be just as common, and 9600-bps is much more common than ever
thought it would be in 1986. There are also many sites that use 19,200-bps
for using UUCP. When systems are very close, they are sometimes linked by
dedicated lines, often running at 9,600 bps. Some UUCP links are run over
local-area networks such as ethernets, sometimes on top of TCP/IP (though more
appropriate protocols than UUCP are usually used over such transport media,
when UUCP is used it's usual point-to-point error correction code is bypassed
to take advantage of the reliability of the underlying network and to improve
bandwidth). Some such links even exist on long-haul packet networks.
The widespread use of more sophisticated mail relay programs (such as
sendmail and MMDF) has increased reliability. Still, there are many hosts
with none of these new facilities, and the sheer size of the network makes
it unwieldly.
The UUCP mail network has traditionally used source code routing with a
syntax like hosta!hostb!hostc!host!user. The UUCP map and pathalias have made
this bearable, but it is still a nuisance. An effort is underway to alleviate
the routing problems by implementing naming in the style of ARPA Internet
domains. This might also allow integration of the UUCP name space into
the ARPA Internet domain name space. In fact there is now an ATT.COM domain
in which most hosts are only on UUCP or CSNET. Most UUCP hosts are not yet in
any Internet domain, however. This domain effort is also handled by the UUCP
Project and appears to be proceeding at a methodical but persistent pace.
The hardware used in the UUCP mail network ranges from small personal
computers through workstations to minicomputers, mainframes and super-
computers. The network extends throughout most of North America and parts of
Asia (Korea and Israel). Including hosts on the related networks JUNET (in
Japan) and EUnet (in Europe), there are at least 7,000 hosts on the network;
possibly 10,000 or more. (EUnet and JUNET hosts are listed in the UUCP maps.)
The UUCP Project addresses are:
uucp-query@cbatt.ATT.COM
cbatt!uucp-query
uucp-query@cbatt.UUCP
Much information about UUCP is published in USENET newsgroups.
USENET (Cooperative Network)
----------------------------
USENET began in 1980 as a medium of communication between users of two
machines, one at the University of North Carolina, the other at Duke
University. It has since grown exponentially to its current size of more than
2000 machines. In the process, the software has been rewritten several times,