From: timk@tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (Tim Kuehn)
Subject: Domain naming conventions
Organization: TDK Consulting Services
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1993 19:55:09 GMT

In article <C082x8.GCt@wimsey.bc.ca> sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne) writes:
>Anyone interested in domain name topics should probably look at the new
>RFC-1386 titled "The US Domain" by A. Cooper and J. Postel. 
>The current approach to use of the US domain is similiar to what the CA-domain
>committee is moving too. Assigning names based on political geography. It is
>implemented a bit differently and possibly a bit more consistently. For example
>it does not appear to allow ibm.us but would require ibm.armonk.ny.us. 

This is an interesting question, since I have a client that presently
has no email-prescence on the net, but will hopefully be getting in 
sometime soon. I'll address this in a seperate message though.

>CA guidelines allow xxx.ca, xxx.prov.ca or xxx.municp.prov.ca depending on
>the size and scope of your business/organization etc.

>My personal opinion is that this approach leads to domain names that are
>too long. Which leads to problems with use due to being incorrectly 
>transcribed.

I'd rather have a domain name that's a little verbose and longer than 
cryptic and shorter since such names are *much* easier to remember. People 
already remember much longer names for snail-mail postal addresses, so 
remembering email address domains, particularly ones based on easily- 
deduced naming rules based on geography are much easier to deal with.

"Problems due to transcription errors" is a smoke screen since any such 
errors will be caught the first time a message is sent to an ill-transcribed
address when it bounces.

>I would like to see a solution that requires at most three tokens and a 
>minimum of characters for the non-organization part. 

Which is fine if you're a computer programmer or in a related profession 
who's used to doing the name-munging such a scheme would require. There are 
a number of major problems with using postal codes in an address: 

1) Addresses created under this proposal are a lot easier to get wrong 
than under the more verbose naming convention. How much easier is it to 
hear over the phone "N2J" when the speaker really said "M2K"? This is 
particularly true in cases where international mail is concerned, and 
you're conversing with someone who has only had to deal with numeric digits 
(as in the USA).

It's a *lot* easier to remember that "The company is TDK Consulting 
Services, he's in the Region/City of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada" 
and associate that with timk@tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca than to associate 
it with "timk@tdkcs.n2j.on.ca" 

2) Figuring out what the destination's postal code is without a postal-code
book is nearly impossible. Postal codes are *way* too cryptic to use in 
naming conventions. If the "three tokens max" scheme is to be applied, 
then it *must* use some easily decipherable and rememberable naming convention 
to go with it.

3) Postal codes (believe it or not) assignments are NOT static for a given 
address over all time. The can change depending on changes in the city 
planning, street re-arrangements, or other odd re-shuffling that may take 
place according to Canada Posts's whims.

>The reason I would like to keep it to three tokens and minimum char's at this
>level is that we tend to add more tokens to the left when in use. For example
>on vanbc:

No problem with that. Snail-mail correspondance is often a lot worse: 

Orgname
Street
City, Province
Postal Codes  [Country]

Attn: Person's Name
      Department of X

Which most people can remember quite easily after using it a couple of 
times. Why? Because the naming convention for the most part makes sense
and goes along with what we're able to associate between an Organization/
Individual and their location/profession. Errors due to the numeric 
components of the address cause the most problems for addressers since 
they're harder to remember. These have to be dealt with by the humans in 
the loop so the snail-mail gets delivered. 

For obvious reasons, we have no humans in the loop where electronic mail
is concerned, so any naming convention we come up with of necessity must
generate names that are easy to remember, even if it's a bit on the 
verbose side.

>Stuart Lynne <sl@wimsey.com> ......................... UNIX Facsimile Software

 +-----------+-----------------------------------+---------------------------+
 | Tim Kuehn | TDK Consulting Services           | timk@tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca |
 | <><       | Ask me about news and mail in KW! | (519)-888-0766            |
 +-----------+-----------------------------------+---------------------------+