From: smd@uunet.ca (Sean Doran)
Subject: Re: Q: organizational subdomains?
Organization: UUNET Canada
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 16:31:14 GMT
Distribution: can

woods@robohack.UUCP (Greg A. Woods) writes:

John Demco> - Some organizations don't fit into any functional category,
John Demco> so some sort of catch-all may be needed.

[...]
John Demco> - One reason to use a subdomain is so that authority can be dele-
>> gated thus decentralizing the administration, and possibly making it easier
>> on the current technology.  But it's not clear to whom a functional
>> subdomain should be delegated.  What body should have it in its power
>> to register all educational institutions?

Surely it's not exclusively a question of political power?  One could
treat it quite pragmatically: one of the universities (probably UBC or
UTCS at the University of Toronto) could take on the job and manage
something along the lines of edu.ca.  

A commercial provider could take on the job of running com.ca.  This
makes sense, as one big logical division in the CA domain applications
is between commercial, educational and governmental organizations.
The number of CA subdomains that "belong" to UUNET is now nontrivial,
and is not restricted to any particular province.  The number of
subdomains that "belong" to the federal government is also nontrivial.
The bulk of the rest of the subdomains are either Universities,
Community Colleges (in Ontario) or various other teaching
organizations.

DRENet could take on mil.ca and move all its contractors and customers
under that, if it wanted.  

The division will continue to grow as IP networking in Canada becomes
more commonplace, both with the growth of the CA*Net member regionals,
our own growth, and the growth of the number of commercial service
providers in Canada.  Also, as the NIC is going to change hands again
in the approaching future, the number of CA domains we are generating
will increase as getting a subdomain under COM or ORG during the
transition may prove a bit less easy than it is now.

There would be some crossover if we were to (as a hypothetical
exercise) move existing domains into functional boxes.  Lsuc.on.ca is
a teaching organization, but a customer of ours.  Devcan.CA is a
federal government agency, but a customer of ours.  Andyne.ON.CA is a
commercial organization which deals with DRENet.  Alcan.CA is a
commercial organization which deals with ONet.  There are a number of
such examples, and this might make giving administrative authority for
a gov.ca (or mil.ca) to DRENet, com.ca to UUNET, and edu.ca to
UBC/UofT/CA*Net a little more complicated.  However, this is why there
is a top-level coordinator, whose job it would be to make sure the
people doing the administration of the subdomains are doing the job
well.

On the other hand, given the growth in On.CA, both in the number of
commercial domains (for which we are largely responsible) and the
number of educational domains (owing to ONet hooking up lots of
community colleges), handing administative authority for ON.CA to one
or the other is less simple, as a large fraction of the job will be
processing stuff from "the other people".

As a third alternative, styles could be mixed.  The bulk of our
subdomains in On.CA could be listed in a COM.CA (or even ON.COM.CA or
some other division of COM.CA should that prove necessary at some
point); others would be best served by staying in On.CA or Munic.On.CA.

Creating such a subdomain (COM.CA) would not take much effort, would
save a fair number of RRs in the top-level-zone in the short run and a
lot more in long run, and would not preclude the domain administrator
remaining responsible to the CA-DOM coordinator.  The administrator
would also have to be responsible to other commercial service
providers or other network service providers with commercial
subdomains (like ONet, BCNET, Wimsey and NSTN).

>I've no objection to the continued use of geo/political subdomain
>names, but only for geo/political entities, such as municipal
>governments, courts, and other "institutions" funded, supporting and
>centred in geo/political regions, etc.

Yes, a pragmatic approach would be to mix styles, so that first-level
subdomains can be delegated to an appropriate authority, and so that
organizations could have a choice to identify on a geographical basis
or on a mostly-functional basis.  I would imagine that municipal
organizations, like boards of education, hospitals, library systems,
city governments and so forth would still tend to choose a geographic
subdomain, while companies would still tend to prefer a functional
subdomain.  This is certainly what we've been hearing from most of our
customers, who include both companies and local agencies among other
things.

	Sean.
Newsgroups: can.domain