[20728] in APO-L
Re: suggestion concerning web site
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen D. Gravrock)
Mon Jul 19 14:21:24 1999
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 11:20:43 -0700
Reply-To: "Stephen D. Gravrock" <gravrock@GOCOUGS.WSU.EDU>
From: "Stephen D. Gravrock" <gravrock@GOCOUGS.WSU.EDU>
To: APO-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
In-Reply-To: <19990719134133.14495.rocketmail@web117.yahoomail.com>
On Mon, 19 Jul 1999, Derek Cashman wrote:
> I was just thinking of a neat idea for the web page
> that might be cool. I was wondering if it might be
> possible to set up a mail-forwarding service which
> could keep e-mail addresses for various levels and
> individuals in apo. That way, we could have an e-mail
> address for president@apo.org which would forward to
> the National President's e-mail address, you could
> also set up an address for the members-at-large,
> section chairs, regional directors (i.e.
> r1director@apo.org, etc). We could also set up a
> forwarding system for chapter addresses, so that
> sending e-mail to a chapter would be something like,
> "alphadeltaiota@apo.org", which would forward to the
> chapter president or someone that would handle this.
> It doesn't sound too difficult to manage, and could
Now that's a great idea. Shouldn't be too hard to implement, either.
Therer are some difficulties, but they're more administrative than
technical.
The forwarding-service would be easy enough to implement. It cold be done
with sendmail aliases or even .forward files (assuming the mail-server is
a unix box of some sort, which it ought to be). The workload involved in
maintaining the system should be relatively light (somewhat heavier if we
were to do aliases for individual chapters as well, but still manageable.)
I suspect that once the system waas working it could be maintained in a
few hours a week, and most of that would be more of a technical-support
function. I'm sure there are more than a few people in APO, including
myself, who would be willing and able to do this.
As I said before, the main problem is administrative. The listed
mail-exchanger for the domain apo.org (the box that handles mailsent to
someone@apo.org) is mail.apo.org, whose IP address is 165.212.184.45. This
happens to also be www.apo.org. The domain, as it turns out, is registered
to APO and administered by fablink.com. This is pretty standard for small
domains such as ours, whose needs are not great enough to justify hiring
several in-house sysadmins at >$50K ea.
Since we don't administer things ourselves, I see three ways to do this:
1. Have fablink implement it for us.
Pros: Least effort.
Cons: Probably costs money, gives us least control.
2. Acquire a computer. convice somebody (most likely one of our host
colleges) to lend us a static IP address, an Ethernet jack, and a place to
put the computer. Arrange for fablink to create a DNS record for
people.apo.org (or something like that)with the IP address of the machine
in question. have one of our brothers at the university in question
implement the system.
I anticipate hardare needs to be as follows: Minimum a used 486, cost
$150, which would do the job but be slightly less reliable and provide no
growing room. Maximum a new K62-400 or similar, which would be more
reliable and provide more headroom if we wanted to do something more
extensive in the future, cost $500-$1000. Donated equipment would probably
work as well.
Pros: Total control, all costs are capital investments.
Cons: More effort. Possibly higher initial cost. (minor) Addresses
are someone@something.apo.org rather than someone@apo.org
3. Same as option 2, except that fablink makes our machine the MX for the
apo.org domain.
Pros (vs. 2): Addresses are someone@apo.org
Cons (vs. 2): Slightly more effort, fablink might not go for it.
I certainly think this is something we should do, it's just a mattter of
which method is best. That, also, would probably have to wait for the next
meeting of the Board of Directors.
Any thoughts?
Regards,
Steve
