From: tonyd@ssc60.sbwk.nj.us (Tony DeBari)
Newsgroups: comp.bbs.waffle,comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Mixed format addresses
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 20:34:30 -0500
Organization: Lost In Space

In <piggy.724555806@newsroom.utas.edu.au> piggy@hilbert.cc.utas.edu.au (La Monte Yarroll) writes:
>tonyd@ssc60.sbwk.nj.us (Tony DeBari) writes:

>...
>>The only real domain left is .<MyCountry> (.US), which is based on a
>>geographic hierarchy.  If I move out of South BrunsWicK, NJ, I have 
>>to register a new domain name.

>Not true.  I live in Sandy Bay, Tasmania (Australia).  My home machine
>is baqaqi.chi.il.us.  This works just fine.  My MX forwarder just
>routes my mail a little further.

Dumb question:  How did you get a .us domain name when you live in 
Tasmania?  Did you move there from Chicago?

>Just pick someplace in the US with which you'd like to be associated,
>and use that for your domain.

Of course, I can tell the folks at ISI anything I want as long as my MX
knows where I really am.  But doesn't this defeat the purpose of having 
a geographic hierarchy for domain names?

>...
>>What would be wrong with a .PRI domain for unaffiliated, private sites?
>>Everyone has at least an MX record in the DNS, it doesn't imply a specific
>>transfer protocol like .UUCP, and there is no geographic hierarchy so a
>>site can be physically moved without having to re-register its domain name.

>>Comments?  Flames?

>That's essentially what the .us domain is supposed to be for.  I'm
>sure there's something written by Postel somewhere that explains why
>he decided to subdivide the .us domain the way he did.

Where might I find this information?  I'm very curious about how the
.us domain came into being.

>BTW, it IS permissible to have a non-geographic subdomain in the .us
>heirarchy, though I don't know of one.  For example, we
>(/usr/group/chicago) could have set up the domain park .ugc.chi.il.us,
>but we already had a lot of sites registered before we found out we
>were allowed to do that.  [...]

I have seen domain parks in .us also (I think there is one in Atlanta,
GA).  But the domain name is still site.subdomain.atl.ga.us.  This isn't
a strictly non-geographic domain name.  I have yet to see a site called
site.domain.us (without the city and state components).

>If you are really keen on having a non-geographic catch-all domain,
>you might approach the us-domain people with a request for
>registration in .nowhere.us, or something like it.  Hmm... is there a
>town in the US by the name of "nowhere"?  :-)

There's gotta be. :-)

I don't know that I'm "really keen" on anything at this point.  The .us 
domain is serving its purpose well and demand for a new top-level domain 
for private sites is probably not great enough to actually get one started.  
I certainly don't have the resources to do it and I'm in no position to 
ask that someone else do it for me.  It's just that the geographic nature 
of .us never did sit well with me (since none of the other big domains are 
geographic) and I thought a analog to .com and .edu for private sites might 
be worth exploring.

-- 
Tony DeBari          FQDN: tonyd@ssc60.sbwk.nj.us     CI$: 73117,452
                     UUCP: ...!uunet!ssc60!tonyd      *P*: GHRW14B

a.k.a. Skip Bowler, captain of USENET Fantasy Bowling League Team 9.