SENDS, a Tool for Managing Domain Naming and Electronic Mail in a Large Organization

Managing the Domain Naming Service and electronic mail routing in a large organization has always been a difficult problem. Systems designed to automate these tasks encounter the basic difficulty that the information needed to maintain an accurate picture of the organization is distributed far more widely than the expertise needed to operate such a system.

This paper describes a simple set of tools that provides automatic central management of host and electronic mail information. It attempts to find a balance between centralized management and distributed autonomy by centralizing the tools and accumulated data and distributing the source of the data. It also centralizes the mail delivery technology. With this, the users and local groups are provided a higher level of service without the loss of control and local administration.