UK net addresses [was Re: E-mail address of Cambridge Crys. Data Centr]

[Dave Love]

>>>>> In article <1994Apr28.080327.26681 at news.unige.ch>, flack at scsun.unige.ch (FLACK Howard) writes:

 > they still drive on the left hand of the road!

Actually, this isn't really true any more, but is a source of endless
confusion.  The canonical order for address components inside JANET
(the UK academic network) is now the same as the internet one,
although this is a relatively well-kept secret.  However, yes, if you
see someone advertising `uk.ac...' (or, probably, uk.<anything else>)
reverse the components and suggest gently that they change it.

Furthermore, there are `long' and `short' forms of JANET addresses,
and the (canonical) long form may not correspond to the internet name.
This may affect you (I've had complaints!) if you have a mail system
which doesn't understand the MX records which provide aliases and if
someone has advertised the long form like daresbury.ac.uk instead of
dl.ac.uk.

I hope that helps and doesn't just confuse.

[In defence, note that the original UK scheme was established before
the internet one and was consistent with the (big-endian) order for
numeric IP addresses.  :-)]