[Houston, Texas, USA] The UUCP Mapping Project is concluding operations
with a gradual shutdown of the service to start on August 1, 2000 and to
complete sometime during the month of November, 2000.
The first step will be the freezing of the system database. This takes place at 0000 GMT on August 1, 2000. After that date, no further changes to the system database will be accepted.
The second step will be the last postings of the system database to the newsgroup comp.mail.maps. A penultimate posting will be made during the month of August. This will contain the final version of the map database prior to the conclusion of the project. During September, the final posting will be done. This posting will remove all listings from the map database except for selected gateways so that those sites that have no obvious alternative connectivity for email will continue to work until the end of the 2000.
The final step will be the removal of the newsgroup comp.mail.maps as a valid newsgroup. This should be done during the month of November, 2000.
The UUCP Mapping Project started in the early 1980s as a means to facilitate the exchange of electronic mail among sites using the UUCP store-and-forward transport mechanism. This software, originally part of the UNIX operating system became available on a variety of operating systems and platforms, from large mainframe to small home PC's. This was done by creating a single database of systems connected to each other via UUCP and then using path building software (such as pathalias ) to determine the optimal path from one system to another. Email addresses using this system incorporated the use of the path as part of the address.
With the evolution of the Internet into mainstream use, the use of UUCP for the exchange of electronic mail has been significantly reduced. Today, UUCP is primarily used to link systems that are not on the Internet to a nearby system that is connected. By use of mail exchange resource records in the domain name system, these off-net systems can use the now-standard Internet email address format.
Please contact Stan Barber, the Manager of the Project, via email if you have more questions. Email can be directed to inquiry@uucp.org.
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