From: smd@uunet.ca (Sean Doran)
Subject: Re: Domain naming conventions
Organization: UUNET Canada
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 06:04:13 GMT

davidf@golem.waterloo.on.ca (David J. Fiander) writes:

>Larger domains will be forced [...]
>or they will have to do it internally (site1.org.ca and
>site2.org.ca).

Indeed, this is quite common for 1st-level subdomains of
top-level-domains.  We do it in uunet.ca (name.city.uunet.ca), and in
ALTER.NET (routername.state.ALTER.NET). To an extent, utoronto.ca has
some geographical information (scar.utoronto.ca, erin.utoronto.ca).

On the other hand, there aren't many current top-level domains that
(prima facie) are broken up geographically along the same lines as US
and CA.  

>This duplication of services means that we tend to have more
>institutions, and hence more names, than a more densely
>populated region.

A more densely populated region, like, say, the U.S.?  :-)

>Not quite sheer speculation.  Empirically, I have never seen a
>domain name in the .nl top-level domain whose second-level
>domain was not privately managed.

I'm not sure quite what you mean by this, but zone transfers of
practically every european domain are fascinating things.  In fact,
the NL domain is practically the antithesis of the CA domain.  (The DK
domain _is_ the antithesis of the CA domain.  This probably is
meaningful. ;-) )  

In such domains, everything is a first-level subdomain of the
top-level-domain.  Acronyms and abbreviations are commonplace.
Geographical subdomains are mostly nonexistant; in fact, in DK there
is only one: texas.DK.  

However, this leads to an interesting point to discuss in the raging
debate about abbreviations.  Consider cpu.nl (Communications and
Products United C.V.) and how that would be dealt with by the CA-DOM
rules if the organization were based in one locality and the C.V. were
Ltd. instead.  Consider diho.NL, which is Delta Instituut voor
Hydrobiologisch Onderzoek, which would probably be something along the
lines of diho.ca if it were a federal government department.  Then
consider hut.NL (Hogeschool Utrecht; Utrecht Highschool) and how that
would be dealt with in CA.  Or aha.NL, which is Algemene Hogeschool
Amsterdam?

Along the more obscure is pica.NL, which is Stichtling Centrum voor
Bibliotheekautomatisering Pica.  Would something like that be
pica.something.ca?  How about spex.NL, which is the Speeech Processing
Expertiise Centre?  Would the committee take spex.CA?  I don't think
so.  What would CA-DOM think about itc.NL, which is the International
Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences?  

Then there's my favourite: q8.NL, Kuwait Petroleum B.V.  Much more
imaginative than Kuwait-Petroleum.Quebec.QC.CA, and also probably
easier to remember.  

This is what happens when a prospective registrant is allowed to
choose something mnemonic, which is associated with the organization
wanting a domain.  Hopefully the national and provincial trademark
rules will be resurrected in Committee, so that something like this
can be registered.  It may not appeal to academics, but then academics
aren't expected to try to make things memorable or appealing, or
present an image to people who run into domains, other than perhaps
stodgy logical correctness. :-)

Now, some stats.  In FR there are approaching 600 subdomains; in NL
there are about 350; in DK there are about 250.  By comparison, CA has
almost 450.  Another interesting metric is the size of the transferred
zone; 66k for CA and NL (although NL has lots of UINFO RRs), 75k for
FR and 30K for DK.  A zone transfer of CA gives me 1596 RRs (including
glue about various nameservers, ugh), NL has 1498 (and no bad glue),
FR has 1809 (ditto), and DK has 786 RRs.  

Essentially, in terms of size of the data, number of records, and
number of subdomains served by the top-level-domain's nameservers,
there is presently no big advantage enjoyed by CA-DOM's structure.

To be fair, though, should one day the topology of Canadian networking
change dramatically, allowing all sorts of nameservers to be used near
all sorts of fast connections to the rest of the world, then CA does
have an advantage.

The geographical subdomains are pointless technically while
nameservice is all done by the top-level CA nameservers.  There is
presently essentially a flat DNS namespace with extra dots that users
get to see.  There is no difference right now as far as the DNS is
concerned between foo.ca and foo.munic.prov.ca.

Moving nameservice for provincial subdomains to other sites isn't a
big win while almost all the queries about CA-based domains come from
places other than CA*Net, and when CA*Net has only three connections
to the outside world.  

On the other hand, one could find oneself wanting to do nameservice
for parts of CA on one machine at UBC, for examble, and other parts on
another machine at UBC, likely because of computer horsepower issues.
Not having everything in the top-level makes this possible, but does
not necessarily imply the need for geographical subdivisions.  It also
isn't even necessary while the size of CA-DOM zone and the number of
queries the nameservers handle both remain manageable.  The size/work
issue is really not much of a problem, given the speed and size of
computers these days.  

Realistically, breaking CA-DOM into provincial subdomains only makes
sense in terms of the DNS if the top-level-nameservers are constantly
being bashed by lots and lots queries per second.  Unless there are
people out there pointing their resolvers at the top-level-nameservers
for CA, this seems unlikely.

	Sean.
Newsgroups: can.domain