Purpose of US Domain?
Robert Kaplan
I have bee reading about the US domain such as "Microsoft.Redmond.WA.US"
which is described at http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/usdnr/usdom-overview.html
Can someone tell me is this is another way to register a web site or is this
something else like naming a server? I tried to enter the microsoft example
but it does not work.
Is this another option to an Internic com, org, net option?
Thanks a lot,
bob
John R. Grout
<kap...@usernomics.com> wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> I have bee reading about the US domain such as "Microsoft.Redmond.WA.US"
> which is described at http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/usdnr/usdom-overview.html
The "us" domain exists for symmetry with the rest of the world...
as Dan Gillmor explained a few weeks ago, all the other countries have
_customarily used_ two letter domains (e.g., "ca" for Canada, "uk" for
United Kingdom) under which they are allowed to assign domain names.
Since USC's ISI regulates the "us" domain, the URL:
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/usdnr/
(one level up from the one you cited) is an excellent source of
information about the "us" domain. From reading it, it appears
that the "us" domain _will_ become customarily used in the
future.
--
John R. Grout
j.g...@computer.org
Jeff Liebermann
wrote:
>The "us" domain exists for symmetry with the rest of the world...
Sigh. The .US domain was literally the first domain. Prior to its
implimentation, there was the "UUCP Mapping Project". This required that
each system have a unique system name. Thanks to some buggy BSD BIND
software, the name also had to be less than 8 chars long. To deal with the
transition, there was the .UUCP domain kludge. The .US domain was
literally everyone that couldn't get one of the backbone nameservers to act
MX (mail exchange) host where the DNS records were traditionally kept. I
guess you could call this its "purpose". Included were municipalities, all
K12 schools, and some quasi-government organizations. There's some RFC
that defines the naming conventions. For many years, the entire .US domain
was run by one person, Anne W. Cooper.
As you may have noticed, my comix.santa-cruz.ca.us domain uses the .US
domain. Some of the benefits are:
1. No fees to Internic.
2. Eliminates email from those that can't type long email addresses.
3. Very reliable TLD (top level domain) servers.
4. Everything you can do in .COM can be done in .US including web server
virtual domains. For example:
http://www.ci.santa-cruz.ca.us City of Santa Cruz CA
http://www.co.santa-cruz.ca.us County of Santa Cruz CA
5. The machines in my office are in the form:
machine_name.comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
which works just fine, though a bit longish.
Eventually, I expect to see domains such as:
company.com.us
as is common in the rest of the world. Anyway, try it. You'll like it.
--
Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
(831)699-0483 pgr (831)426-1240 fax (831)336-2558 home
http://www.cruzio.com/~jeffl WB6SSY
je...@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us je...@cruzio.com
Eric Edwards
Jeff Liebermann <je...@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us> wrote:
>On Sun, 21 Feb 1999 11:30:32 -0800, j.g...@computer.org (John R. Grout)
>wrote:
>
>>The "us" domain exists for symmetry with the rest of the world...
>
>Sigh. The .US domain was literally the first domain.
Um. No. It wasn't. The com, edu, and net domains precede the US
domain by several years.
> Prior to its
>implimentation, there was the "UUCP Mapping Project". This required that
>each system have a unique system name. Thanks to some buggy BSD BIND
>software, the name also had to be less than 8 chars long. To deal with
>the transition, there was the .UUCP domain kludge.
The UUCP mapping project and the .UUCP kludge had nothing to do with
BIND. It was a sendmail hack. A similar hack was used to address
Bitnet hosts. Remember .bitnet? Further, the UUCP mapping project was
not a transitional stage to the US domain. It was troublesome, however.
Toward the end (is it truly dead yet?), it was widely suggested that
hosts transition to domain names. Some documents suggested using the US
domain but it was hardly a mandate.
[snip]
>Eventually, I expect to see domains such as:
> company.com.us
>as is common in the rest of the world.'
I wouldn't hold your breath. There have many people, including myself,
who have railed against the rigid geographic structure of the US domain.
But years have gone by and nothing has changed. Until it is changed,
the US domain will be largely ignored.
--
Real courtesy requires human effort and understanding.
Never let your machine or your habit send courtesy copies.
John Higdon
(Eric Edwards) wrote:
> The UUCP mapping project and the .UUCP kludge had nothing to do with
> BIND. It was a sendmail hack. A similar hack was used to address
> Bitnet hosts. Remember .bitnet? Further, the UUCP mapping project was
> not a transitional stage to the US domain. It was troublesome, however.
> Toward the end (is it truly dead yet?), it was widely suggested that
> hosts transition to domain names. Some documents suggested using the US
> domain but it was hardly a mandate.
UUCP is anything but dead. I have been providing news and mail via UUCP on
a complimentary basis for years and years. A few people have since dropped
off, but I still count a dozen dependencies on my "public" UUCP host. Most
of these people are old-timers on the net who prefer the automatic and
background nature of UUCP for news and mail to the clients used with POP
and NNTP services. No net connection required--only a phone line making a
local call. And, UUCP is two-way, meaning that one site does not have to
constantly poll the other, but rather connect on demand.
> I wouldn't hold your breath. There have many people, including myself,
> who have railed against the rigid geographic structure of the US domain.
> But years have gone by and nothing has changed. Until it is changed,
> the US domain will be largely ignored.
The pressure is increasing. Back when I got my domain name, no one, but no
one had a clue concerning the Internet. This remained the case for years
and years. Then, marketing departments discovered that the Internet was
"cool". Now there are dozens of companies who have written to me wondering
if I would sell or just give up my domain name, because they feel they
need it worse than I. Some of them (and I have given them due credit on my
webpage) have even filed or threatened to file challenges with Internic.
The point is that for every "decent" domain name, there are a zillion
entities that want it. Right now, it is a circus of big guys trying to
push little guys around to the apparent end of "whoever has the most
expensive lawyers gets the name". The only way to mitigate that problem is
to broaden the namespace.
--
John Higdon | P.O. Box 7648 | +1 408 264 4115 | FAX:
| San Jose, CA 95150 | +1 500 FOR-A-MOO |+1 408 264 4407
ab...@ati.com | http://www.ati.com
Eric Edwards
>In article <slrn7d3bv7...@spica.exile.org>, ese...@news9.exile.org
>(Eric Edwards) wrote:
>
>> The UUCP mapping project and the .UUCP kludge had nothing to do with
>> BIND. It was a sendmail hack. A similar hack was used to address
>> Bitnet hosts. Remember .bitnet? Further, the UUCP mapping project was
>> not a transitional stage to the US domain. It was troublesome, however.
>> Toward the end (is it truly dead yet?), it was widely suggested that
>> hosts transition to domain names. Some documents suggested using the US
>> domain but it was hardly a mandate.
>
>UUCP is anything but dead.
Oh, I didn't mean to imply that *UUCP* was dead. I was referring to the
UUCP mapping project. I stopped submitting host information to the UUCP
mapping project in 1995 when it became clear that my updates were simply
going into a black hole. I was still running UUCP at home until
November. I pulled the plug when I finally managed to get a full time
connection into my home. I still run my own mail and news servers. But
now my mail comes in SMTP and news via NNTP.
pa...@webnexus.com
Higdon) wrote:
> The point is that for every "decent" domain name, there are a zillion
> entities that want it. Right now, it is a circus of big guys trying to
> push little guys around to the apparent end of "whoever has the most
> expensive lawyers gets the name". The only way to mitigate that problem is
> to broaden the namespace.
If there truly are a "zillion" entities that want the cool
names, then I don't think any amount of broadening would help.
Seems to me you have to take away the means that lawyers
have to attack with--domain names should not be subject
to trademarks.
Sam Paik
--
The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970's and 1980's
hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of
any crash programs embarked upon now.
- Paul Ehrlich in the beginning of his 1968 ``The Population Bomb''
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Jeff Liebermann
>>Sigh. The .US domain was literally the first domain.
>Um. No. It wasn't. The com, edu, and net domains precede the US
>domain by several years.
Ouch. You're correct. My appologies for my faulty memory. I had nothing
to do with Bitnet and barely recall that it existed.
>Toward the end (is it truly dead yet?), it was widely suggested that
>hosts transition to domain names. Some documents suggested using the US
>domain but it was hardly a mandate.
Sorry. I wasn't clear. The transition from bang path addressing to domain
addressing is what I should have noted. For a considerable time, some
systems simply did not have a domain mailer. For example, Xenix had no
official domain addressing MTA (although Smail 3.1 was quite commonly
used). The only way address mail was to setup a bang path to the nearest
"smart host" (one with DNS) and hope that they can untangle the address.
Some of these smart hosts required some kind of a domain, so the .UUCP
kludge was invented. The bang path only MTA's would just treat the .UUCP
as part of the system name so they were happy.
As I mentioned, the .US domain became the haven of any system that couldn't
convince someone to deal with their DNS and MX records. The problem was
that during the transition from bang path to domain addressing, the
non-commerical restriction on NFSnet traffic was still an issue. People
were affraid that by getting a .COM domain, they would be automatically
labeled as being commercial. This was especially true of those getting
back door connections from restricted sources (i.e. universities). The .US
domain looked like the perfect answer to remaining non-commercial.
I'm really glad that the UUCP mapping project went away. When one of the
local large companies removed their entry in the database, my puny system
became the major traffic point for everything destined locally. It was
hell for a few days until I managed to re-route the traffic.
>>Eventually, I expect to see domains such as:
>> company.com.us
>>as is common in the rest of the world.
>I wouldn't hold your breath. There have many people, including myself,
>who have railed against the rigid geographic structure of the US domain.
I don't really want to start a debate on the issue, but my guess is that
some international trade agreement will eventually force some level of
domain name standardization.
--
Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
(831)421-6491 pgr (831)426-1240 fax (831)336-2558 home
Mike Ward
wrote:
>The pressure is increasing. Back when I got my domain name, no one, but no
>one had a clue concerning the Internet. This remained the case for years
>and years. Then, marketing departments discovered that the Internet was
>"cool". Now there are dozens of companies who have written to me wondering
>if I would sell or just give up my domain name, because they feel they
>need it worse than I. Some of them (and I have given them due credit on my
>webpage) have even filed or threatened to file challenges with Internic.
A while back, our evening talk show host Spencer Hughes and I found
that the "spencerhughes.com" domain was actually owned by a real
estate concern in New Hampshire (named "Spencer-Hughes").
I politely fired off a note to the site's (and company's) owner,
asking him what we could do to get the name. I suggested that perhaps
they could get "spencer-hughes.com" (matching their company's name,
with the dash) and that we'd help them do it if that'd help things.
They steadfastly declined...saying they got a lot of worldwide
business off of the domain name and that we were just (basically) a
small talk show in California. Oh well. ;)
So, that's it...no lawsuits threatened, no threats on our part...we
said "OK, thanks anyway"...and I suggested to Spencer that he register
some sort of alternate domain name. Goodness knows there's enough
options, and most of them aren't likely to be taken... (be creative!)
Mike
John Higdon
mw...@crl.remove-this-part.com (Mike Ward) wrote:
> So, that's it...no lawsuits threatened, no threats on our part...we
> said "OK, thanks anyway"...and I suggested to Spencer that he register
> some sort of alternate domain name. Goodness knows there's enough
> options, and most of them aren't likely to be taken... (be creative!)
That is the way dozens of requests from folks wanting ATI.COM have heen
handled. "Sorry, not available", is adequate for most. The big hook for
most people is the webpage. We have never used the webpage for any real
purpose, and it shows of course. Folks look at that and just assume that
we are not really using the domain name, either. The newbie hoards (which
as far as I am concerned includes that Canadian graphics card company)
cannot begin to understand what it means to a long-term Internet player to
have stable email addresses that have not changed in over a decade, or
what a mess it would be to uproot forty domain dependencies.
I have no idea what we would accept from someone to give up the domain
name, but as I have suggested in the past, it may be worth more to us than
it is to anyone trying to get it from us. Threatening us can do nothing
but raise the price even more.
onomatopoetic justice
Remember, the Internet is not the real world. .to domains probably
have nothing to do with the island kingdom of Tonga. International
trade agreements should have nothing to do with domain name
standardization; that should be a task left to the online community to
execute.
rone
we could take this to net.internet.dns.policy...
--
In the truest spirit of usenet I actually have zero idea what I'm talking
about and am making all this up, but it does seem reasonable and has the
added benefint of possibly even beng true.
- Richard Sexton <ric...@vrx.net>
John Higdon
mw...@crl.remove-this-part.com (Mike Ward) wrote:
> And why couldn't the graphics card company
> (which I first thought of before I knew you had ati.com) use
> "atigraphics.com" or something? It enhances their name.
Actually, the name they have, ATITECH.COM is perfect. I'm sure the only
reason I get thousands of hits an hour is because the company has NEVER
made a point of publicizing its website. It didn't even stumble on to the
net until the mid-nineties and didn't really have a website until '96. The
company looks at the net as just another marketing tool and is applying
the standard corporate strongarm tactics to this particular "service".
BTW, I twice offered to point the DNS A record for www.ati.com to any site
of the company's choosing and they hautily and snotily turned it down as
"insufficient".
So they get nada.
Mike Ward
wrote:
>I have no idea what we would accept from someone to give up the domain
>name, but as I have suggested in the past, it may be worth more to us than
>it is to anyone trying to get it from us. Threatening us can do nothing
>but raise the price even more.
There are some trademark issues that InterNIC will accede to - but
it'd be just as easy to register an alternate name. Now, I can see
why McDonald's wouldn't want to settle for mcdonaldshamburgers.com or
whatever, but I can already think of three examples Spencer could use
that won't be taken. And why couldn't the graphics card company
(which I first thought of before I knew you had ati.com) use
"atigraphics.com" or something? It enhances their name.
Mike
bi...@mix.com
> And why couldn't the graphics card company
> (which I first thought of before I knew you had ati.com) use
> "atigraphics.com" or something? It enhances their name.
The best names are short and easy to remember or even guess.
The real problem is the entire world trying to stuff itself
in to just one top level domain..
Billy Y..