Dear People,

There are a large number of VAX/VMS sites that wish to link to Usenet.  
I am head of a working group within the VAX SIG of DECUS that is addressing
this need.  The requisite software exists in the form of PMDF; with that
we can talk to BSD 4.3 sites and to each other.  We can also build some
high-bandwidth "backbones" by exploiting presently-unused (e.g. nighttime)
capacity on wide-area VMS-to-VMS DECnet links.  (PMDF can use DECnet links
as well.)  

(Before you recoil in horror at the thought of a hundred or a thousand
VMS sites jumping on the net and breaking the netnews distribution backbone, 
let me mention that there's no readily available software for handling 
netnews on VMS.  Such software is being written, but the overwhelming 
consensus at the last working group meeting was "we don't want to read,
forward, or respond to all that traffic, just the VAX-related issues".  
Of course this might change.)  

Naturally we want to avoid the confusion caused by bang-style route-oriented
addresses; the right thing to do is to become a registered Internet domain
(or zone?) or to join an existing domain.  (Presumably, a system that can 
establish a link to an existing, cooperative Internet node need only become 
a part of that node's domain, or subdomain, or park.)  

Do you have any information that would help?  Perhaps a start would be to
send me whatever you would send me if I was a lone Unix site wishing to
join the UUCP zone, plus whatever you would send me if I was a company 
big enough to think about establishing my own xxx.com domain (it is not
inconceivable that DECUS might be able to act as the responsible authority
for decus.org , or some such).  

Thank you in advance...
From crash!bigbang!scubed!seismo!cbosgd!stargate!mark Mon Jun 15 23:36:15 1987
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Ppath: pnet01!jeh
To: crash!pnet01!jeh@scubed:bigbang
Subject: Re:  Uucp project inquiry
Date: 14 Jun 87 16:15:40 EDT (Sun)
From: crash!stargate.COM!mark
Message-Id: <8706141615.AA01392@stargate.COM>

Hi.  There are already lots of VMS sites on Usenet, generally by using
a UNIX emulator such as Eunice.  The hardest part is getting UUCP running,
but any email mechanism can be used in theory.

I'm not sure who "we" (wanting to register a domain) is.  Domains are set
up on an organizational level, so each organization (company, university,
government agency, etc) should register their own separate domain.  We
are authorized to register domains reachable with UUCP; if you're using
PMDF you might want to consider CSNET, which is geared toward that protocol.
If you can appear to be UUCP (e.g. reachable with bangs) through some
gateway that agrees to pass all your traffic (crash might be overwhelmed
if you're talking about much traffic) we can do the registrations.  If
your members are very small, it is possible to set up "park" membership
(I gather you're already familiar with this through Bill) for $50/year,
but the normal organizational rate for the UUCP Zone is $150/year, which
I'd guess any organization with a VAX can afford.

Domains describe organizations.  Even if your organization has more than
one machine, or is on more than one network, you can use the same domain
name for all machines owned by the organization.  (We don't consider DECUS
an organization in this sense, as it doesn't own its members machines.)

I'll send the UUCP Zone information packet and Stargate announcements
separately.

	Mark