HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: hooper@ccs.QueensU.CA (Andy Hooper)
Subject: Re: Q: organizational subdomains?
Organization: Queen's University, Kingston
Distribution: can.domain
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 13:30:39 GMT

In article <C0DJBy.LAE@uunet.ca>, smd@uunet.ca (Sean Doran) writes:
| I like the idea of functional subdomains alot.  I doubt that my
| preference is shared by very many of the people who are part of the
| CA-DOM committee, but a couple of former members and at least one
| current member think that something along the lines of co.ca (as an
| analogue of co.uk) might be useful.
| 
| Heck, I volunteer to set up and maintain nameservice and registry work
| for any commercially-oriented functional second-level subdomain of CA
| that the committee and CA-DOM coordinator will allow, provided that we
| are allowed to allocate subdomains thereof without quite the same
| restrictions that the rest of the CA domain has.

To be a little provocative, let's assume you do this, everybody thinks it's
wonderful, and they all flock in. Say it is as successful as .COM, and you
get 5000 registrations. GSI, who run .COM now, is having problems coping with
that size. Do you really think you can handle it? (Not a personal criticism
of you or your employer, I would ask the same of anyone.) Do you have an idea
on how to subdivide the work when it gets to be too much?

Try to think about what might be an upper bound on the size. Making up some
numbers, say an average of 30 medium to large size cities and towns per
province, with an average 300 businesses each. That's 90,000 right there,
without even thinking about home personal systems.

Andy Hooper


Newsgroups: can.domain
From: sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne)
Subject: Re: locality abbreviations (was Re: What is this group for?)
Organization: Wimsey Information Services
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 02:39:35 GMT

In article <93Jan06.201931.14814@acs.ucalgary.ca> kozlowsk@acs.ucalgary.ca (Don M. Kozlowski) writes:
>OK, I'll bite. How does one get a look at the CA-Domain Registrations?

Ftp them from one of the sites that have copies. Try relay.ubc.ca.

-- 
Stuart Lynne <sl@wimsey.com> ......................... UNIX Facsimile Software
Wimsey Information Technologies ................... moderator biz.sco.binaries
uucp login:nuucp passwd:nuucp .................... ftp.wimsey.com:~ftp/ls-lR.Z
PD Software for SCO UNIX .................... ftp.wimsey.com:~ftp/pub/wimseypd
Newsgroups: can.domain
From: eah@xenitec.on.ca (Ed Hew)
Subject: Re: can.domain
Organization: XeniTec Consulting, Kitchener, Ontario, CANADA
Date: Mon, 04 Jan 1993 06:05:15 GMT

In article <C081rA.Eu3@wimsey.bc.ca> sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne) writes:
>Well I wouldn't agree with that. There is currently (unlike the .us or standard
>NIC domains) no requirement for having an Internet Domain Name Server
>to support your domain. Down south it *is* required. You can't get registered
>in .com or .us unless someone is willing to support an MX for you.

You can go out and get a drivers licence and no says that you have to
buy a car and actually _use_ it.  You can get "C" class IP numbers and
no one says you have to use those either.  What's so wrong with allowing
existing organizations to register a Canadian subdomain as a placeholder
and then putting DNS in place when they actually want to use it?

Remember that no connectivity is indicated on registrations unless it
can be verified that the connectivity exists, or will in _very_ short
order.  Saying "I exist, you just can't get to me yet" is perfectly OK.

>>	[...] Alternatively, we
>>could stick with John Demco, who is doing the job well, although I
>>think he spends too much time dealing with the committee. 
>
>And not enough time talking to the users.

Seeing as how John has expressed his interest in monitoring and
contributing to the can.domain newsgroup, is this really true?

		--ed
Newsgroups: can.domain
From: klassen@sol.UVic.CA (Melvin Klassen)
Subject: Re: Domain naming conventions
Organization: University of Victoria, Victoria, B.C. CANADA
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 93 22:40:37 GMT

In article <1993Jan5.174007> timk@tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (Tim Kuehn) writes:
>
>However, if we took the first four letters of all the city name(s), 
>would that generate a unique identifier within a province? 
Hmm.  In B.C., there are:

Port Moody           Bella Bella
Port Alberni         Bella Coola

so "four" or "five" isn't enough!
Newsgroups: can.domain
From: morton@gaul.csd.uwo.ca (Brent Morton)
Subject: Re: Domain naming conventions
Organization: Computer Science Dept., Univ. of Western Ontario, London, Canada
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 04:15:18 GMT

In article <385@unbc.edu> lyndon@unbc.edu (Lyndon Nerenberg) writes:
>
>Why is it that we have to have to have geographic domains, anyway? It
>seems to me that other than .us there are no country level domains
>doing this. Is it strictly a fear of overload of the .ca nameserver

The ex-Soviet domains (such as .by, .lv, and still .su) use the city or 
region name as a subdomain. Note that this geographic name is usually
abbreviated; msk.su = Minsk.

-- Brent
morton@artifis.gaul.csd.uwo.ca

Newsgroups: can.domain
From: morton@gaul.csd.uwo.ca (Brent Morton)
Subject: Re: Q: organizational subdomains?
Organization: Computer Science Dept., Univ. of Western Ontario, London, Canada
Distribution: can
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 21:27:10 GMT

In article <1ids10INNpk0@grolsch.cs.ubc.ca> demco@cs.ubc.ca (John Demco) writes:
>In article <1993Jan5.053622.10995@julian.uwo.ca>
>morton@gaul.csd.uwo.ca (Brent Morton) writes:
>>I've wondered for some time why Canada chose not to adopt the organizational
>>subdomain system in use in countries such as the UK, Australia, Taiwan,
>>New Zealand, South Africa, Austria, and even, as a domain, in the US. By this
>>I mean 'ac.uk', 'edu.tw', 'ac.za', 'co.uk', 'gen.nz', etc. 
>
>Brent, this is a good question and probably one that should go into a
>FAQ list.  It's something we discussed at great length back in 1987,
>and the topic comes up periodically.

I appreciate your reply, John -- as I said originally, the question had puzzled
me ever since I became aware of the general theory of domain names.

>countries is that the network administrators in charge of the domains
>looked at .COM, .EDU, .GOV, and so on and decided to copy the
>decomposition, one level down.

I agree with you. You gave in your message some thought-provoking reasons as to
why the functional subdomain was not used in Canada -- I noticed that worries
about overtaxing technology now or in the future rank high on the list, and I
can certainly imagine the difficulties which must be going on with the .COM
domain.

The statement of another committee member, "Functional subdomains are 
artificial," is definitely true some of the time. On the other hand, I like to
know what sort of site it is that I'm talking to, or what sort of site someone
is at, as acronyms are often hard to decipher (uwo.ca, for someone not familiar
with Canada, doesn't say much). Kaist.ac.kr is one that, if I didn't have the
'ac', I wouldn't be able to guess what sort of site it was beyond the fact
that it's located in S. Korea.

Of course, not everyone will feel the same way, and I understand the reasons
why we don't have functional subdomains, but I'm still a little disappointed
that I'm not

-- Brent
morton@artifis.gaul.uwo.AC.ca

Newsgroups: can.domain
From: anne@maxwell.concordia.ca (Anne Bennett)
Subject:  Q: organizational subdomains?
Reply-To: anne@maxwell.concordia.ca (Anne Bennett)
Organization: Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
Distribution: can.domain
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 16:59:15 GMT


morton@gaul.csd.uwo.ca (Brent Morton) writes:
> I've wondered for some time why Canada chose not to adopt the organizational
> subdomain system in use in countries such as the UK, Australia, Taiwan,
> New Zealand, South Africa, Austria, and even, as a domain, in the US. By this
> I mean 'ac.uk', 'edu.tw', 'ac.za', 'co.uk', 'gen.nz', etc. I've noticed that
> a couple of sites in B.C. and one, I believe, in Ontario, voluntarily use
> 'gov.bc.ca' and 'gov.on.ca' -- why not nationwide? 

and smd@uunet.ca (Sean Doran) adds:
> I like the idea of functional subdomains alot.  I doubt that my
> preference is shared by very many of the people who are part of the
> CA-DOM committee, but a couple of former members and at least one
> current member think that something along the lines of co.ca (as an
> analogue of co.uk) might be useful.
[...]
> Things like wimsey.co.ca, xenitec.co.ca, reptilian-research.co.ca or
> even yuggoth.co.ca would be registered without too much ado about the
> name, and with no concern about geographic location; everyone would be
> on an equal footing.  

This seems like a logical suggestion; it has the advantage, as Sean
points out, that everyone is on an equal footing.  The only question
would be whether the number of potential domains in Canada is still too
large to be accommodated by splitting them into only half a dozen groups,
i.e. whether more hierarchical levels are necessary.

It might be necessary to support a parallel geographical namespace, if
only for practical reasons.  If I ever struck it rich, I'd love to have
a private SLIP connection;  I doubt it would be practical to register
me as domain anne-bennett.person.ca, if only because I know that there
are lots of Anne Bennetts in Canada, and as the technology becomes more
accessible, the others will want to be on the net too!  For large
groups of small sites, I think the CA-DOM committee is right in
thinking (if indeed speculations concerning their thoughts are
well-founded :-) that a geographical namespace is desirable.  Perhaps
there aren't too many Anne Bennetts in Montreal, and I can reserve the
site name anne-bennett.montreal.qc.ca.  All right, you can laugh, but
we *are* eventually going to have to deal with this problem, if only in
ten years!

BTW, if we end up with functional subdomains under ca, I think we should
use the same groupings as are now used in the root domain, i.e. com, edu,
etc., because (1) they are already familiar, and (2) they do not resemble
the two-letter abbreviations for provinces.

-- 
Ms. Anne Bennett          anne@maxwell.concordia.ca           (514) 848-7606
Computing Services C-1012, Concordia University, Montreal QC, Canada H3G 1M8
(Administrator for Concordia University mail relay, news transfer, and DNS) 
Newsgroups: can.domain
From: sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne)
Subject: Re: can.domain
Organization: Wimsey Information Services
Distribution: can
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 03:57:49 GMT

In article <384@unbc.edu> lyndon@unbc.edu (Lyndon Nerenberg) writes:
>
>> committee members?  I was invited to join the CA Domain Committee
>> just this last March, and there have been a number of newer additions

Invited???

>What does the current membership number, and how many of those people joined
>within the last year?

So what is the current membership list? What is the length of each members
term? Who chooses who to invite? What are the rules? How can we join so
we have some say? 

-- 
Stuart Lynne <sl@wimsey.com> ......................... UNIX Facsimile Software
Wimsey Information Technologies ................... moderator biz.sco.binaries
uucp login:nuucp passwd:nuucp .................... ftp.wimsey.com:~ftp/ls-lR.Z
PD Software for SCO UNIX .................... ftp.wimsey.com:~ftp/pub/wimseypd
Newsgroups: can.domain
From: davidf@golem.waterloo.on.ca (David J. Fiander)
Subject: Re: Domain naming conventions
Date: Thu, 07 Jan 1993 12:31:45 GMT

According to lyndon@unbc.edu (Lyndon Nerenberg):
>
>Why is it that we have to have to have geographic domains, anyway? It
>seems to me that other than .us there are no country level domains
>doing this. Is it strictly a fear of overload of the .ca nameserver
>machines? And is that a valid argument these days? I notice that
>domains such as .fi and .nl tend to register most everyone under
>their respective top-level domains and are not suffering from meltdown
>on their nameservers.

Because The Netherlands and Finland are about the size of Nova
Scotia and the Yukon respectively, and the more populous of the
two (The Netherlands) has about the same population as Ontario
and BC combined.  There isn't any _need_ to have more than one
level of domain at present.

- David
Newsgroups: can.domain
From: John Demco <demco@cs.ubc.ca>
Subject: solucorp.qc.ca registration
Submit-To: candom@xenitec.on.ca
Organization: [resent by] The CANDOM gateway and Propagation Society
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 06:54:00 GMT
Resent-By: registry@xenitec.on.ca
Precedence: bulk

Subdomain:      solucorp.qc.ca
Date-Received:  1992/12/19
Date-Approved:  1993/01/11
Organization:   Solucorp
Type:           For-Profit Proprietorship
Description:    Consultant and software developer
Admin-Name:     Jacques Gelinas
Admin-Title:    Designer
Admin-Postal:   Solucorp
                1326 De Val-Brillant
                Ste-Dorothee, Quebec
                H7Y 1V9
Admin-Phone:    +1 (514) 689 7778
Admin-Mailbox:  jacques@solucorp.qc.ca
Tech-Name:      Jacques Gelinas
Tech-Title:     Designer
Tech-Postal:    Solucorp
                1326 De Val-Brillant
                Ste-Dorothee, Quebec
                H7Y 1V9
Tech-Phone:     +1 (514) 689 7778
Tech-Mailbox:   jacques@solucorp.qc.ca
Location:       45 30 N / 73 45 W city
Forwarder:      Internet: login.qc.ca <jmp@login.qc.ca>;
Forwarder:      NetNorth: none;
Forwarder:      CDNnet: none;
Forwarder:      UUCP: comback (login.qc.ca) <jmp@login.qc.ca>;

Newsgroups: can.domain
From: timk@tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (Tim Kuehn)
Subject: Re: locality abbreviations 
Organization: TDK Consulting Services
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 17:44:45 GMT

In article <C0DG76.Ltv@wimsey.bc.ca> sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne) writes:
>I don't think (airport code are) as practical as postal codes. I can give 
>you the PC for any currently registered domain, or someone I have a business 
>card for in a few seconds. But airport would require looking up in a list. 
>And there is a minor problem with knowing what airport someone is near. But 
>that doesn't make it unusuable.

Another problem is "Which airport"? I am close to three I can think of:
Breslau, one in Hamilton, and one in Toronto. And who knows how many 
private or small sites there are out there.

Which to use? :-)

 +-----------+-----------------------------------+---------------------------+
 | Tim Kuehn | TDK Consulting Services           | timk@tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca |
 | <><       | Ask me about news and mail in KW! | (519)-888-0766            |
 +-----------+-----------------------------------+---------------------------+
Newsgroups: can.domain
From: anton@analsyn.gts.org (Anton J Aylward)
Subject: Re: Domain naming conventions
Reply-To: anton@lethe.gts.org
Organization: ASCI: UNIX Database and Communications
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8]
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 01:56:19 GMT

In the article (<C0E3Lu.9nB@newsflash.concordia.ca>) Anne Bennett (anne@maxwell.concordia.ca) posted to can.domain:

:   3) If we allow a very large number of sets of "guidelines", we will in
:      effect have no guidelines; the namespace will in effect be flat
:      under ca, but we will have lots of artificial one-member subdomains.
:      That would be the worst of all possible worlds.

Isn't that what we have now - and I don't just mean in .ca ?
Most of whats in the .org and .com are one-member subdomains.
--
Anton J Aylward	
	"The body politic is swerving from left to right and right to
	 left looking for quick fixes for systemic problems."
	   - Paul Palango, Journalist, ex The Globe and Mail
Newsgroups: can.domain
From: sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne)
Subject: Re: Q: organizational subdomains?
Organization: Wimsey Information Services
Distribution: can
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 04:02:14 GMT

In article <1993Jan6.212710.23555@julian.uwo.ca> morton@gaul.csd.uwo.ca (Brent Morton) writes:

>I agree with you. You gave in your message some thought-provoking reasons as to
>why the functional subdomain was not used in Canada -- I noticed that worries
>about overtaxing technology now or in the future rank high on the list, and I
>can certainly imagine the difficulties which must be going on with the .COM
>domain.

Please share these difficulties with the rest of us. I know I don't read as
much news as I should :-) But I havn't seen much mention of an imminent 
meltdown in .com or elsewhere (except rumours in this group).

Details and accurate information would be very much appreciated. Not just
vague suggestions or implications.

>Of course, not everyone will feel the same way, and I understand the reasons
>why we don't have functional subdomains, but I'm still a little disappointed
>that I'm not

The reason we don't have functional sub-domains is that the committee 
made that decision for us. I remain to be convinced that it was a good
decision. I would also like the committee to release it's archives of
discussions if it does not want to re-iterate them here.

-- 
Stuart Lynne <sl@wimsey.com> ......................... UNIX Facsimile Software
Wimsey Information Technologies ................... moderator biz.sco.binaries
uucp login:nuucp passwd:nuucp .................... ftp.wimsey.com:~ftp/ls-lR.Z
PD Software for SCO UNIX .................... ftp.wimsey.com:~ftp/pub/wimseypd
Newsgroups: can.domain
From: eah@xenitec.on.ca (Ed Hew)
Subject: Re: Domain naming conventions
Organization: XeniTec Consulting, Kitchener, Ontario, CANADA
Date: Thu, 07 Jan 1993 21:36:18 GMT

In article <C0I120.Bp@frumious.uucp> uunet.ca!frumious!pat writes:
>Some population figures from the 1990 Britannica World Data volume:
>
>   The Netherlands (1989)   14,846,000
>   Canada (1989)            26,189,000
>
>So the population of Canada is less than twice that of The
>Netherlands.  It may be true that Canada needs to split its
>top-level domain and The Netherlands doesn't, but this hardly
>seems obvious from the population figures.

Has anyone bothered to contact the people with authority over
the .nl domain to ascertain what exactly their needs and position
on this issue are?  Without this information, comments on .nl are
sheer speculation.

                --ed            (Ed Hew)
--
        Canadian UUCP Map Coordinator           <path@cs.toronto.edu>
   ==>  UUCP liason to .CA Domain Registry	<registry@cs.toronto.edu>
        XeniTec Consulting Services             <edhew@xenitec.on.ca>
From: lyndon@unbc.edu (Lyndon Nerenberg)
Newsgroups: can.domain
Subject: Re: locality abbreviations
Date: 7 Jan 93 00:37:27 GMT
Organization: University of Northern B.C.

> (right beside bar@company.happy-valley.nf.ca)

So who will be the first to register foo.head-all-smashed-in-buffalo-jump.xx.ca?

(The province escapes me at the moment.)

--lyndon
Newsgroups: can.domain
From: timk@tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (Tim Kuehn)
Subject: Re: locality abbreviations 
Organization: TDK Consulting Services
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 19:00:00 GMT

In article <1993Jan6.122536.21080@analsyn.gts.org> anton@lethe.gts.org writes:
>What if I'm located in Ottawa but all my cutomers are in the USA? 

If you're concerned about national xenophobia on the part of your customers,
then you shouldn't look for a .ca domain naming convention to solve your 
customer-relations problems. Go to .com or .org where there's *no* telling 
where you came from, rather than ask for a crypic .ca designation in order
to hide your location.

>Vance Shipley mentioned this.  At least airport designators
>don't need ".ca" and are crytic if you don't have the directory ;-)

Not :-), that's :-(.

Seriously, one of the things CA-DOM has to decide is just what the .ca
domain is supposed to accomplish and then base the naming convention on 
that. Once established, if people want to be under .ca *and* do their own 
thing outside of those guidlines then they should be directed to .com, 
.mil., .edu, or whatever.  Having all sorts of different rules to accomodate 
people unwilling to have their mail forwarded when they move, or get 
registered under .com or .org in order to avoid offending xenophobic 
customer "sensibilities" only makes life harder in general for everyone 
else who would otherwise be admirably served under a geographical naming
convention.

>Anton J Aylward

 +-----------+-----------------------------------+---------------------------+
 | Tim Kuehn | TDK Consulting Services           | timk@tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca |
 | <><       | Ask me about news and mail in KW! | (519)-888-0766            |
 +-----------+-----------------------------------+---------------------------+
Newsgroups: can.domain
From: smd@uunet.ca (Sean Doran)
Subject: Re: Domain naming conventions
Organization: UUNET Canada
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 08:10:07 GMT

sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne) writes:

>First the US domain appears to be more than willing to work with 
>private individuals. The CA guidelines seem to want an organization.

Yes, this is the impression I have too.  Not only that, but the CA-DOM
committee seems to think in terms of large organizations where formal
titles are used, and directors and managers loom at every level.

This is an unrealistic view given the privatization of the Internet,
and the growth of connectivity among smaller and less formal
organizations.

In order to get a domain approved, we had to have a client of ours
make up titles for their Tech and Admin contacts, because the
committee would not grok the fact that small companies don't always
use formal titles at all, let alone ones like "Systems Analyst" or
"IBM Mainframe Support Manager" or "Project Leader".

We have also had troubles where very highly R&D oriented companies
with non-standard titles and hierarchies have been asked to revise
their list of contacts, because the Admin-Contact didn't have a title
that sounded impressive or permanent enough for the committee. 

This weltanschauung is very frustrating, and should be changed.  The
world is neither a University nor a fortune-50 company.

	Sean.
Newsgroups: can.domain
From: sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne)
Subject: Re: Q: organizational subdomains?
Organization: Wimsey Information Services
Distribution: can
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 06:22:43 GMT

In article <1993Jan7.070250.9631@robohack.UUCP> woods@robohack.UUCP (Greg A. Woods) writes:

>Easy for .COM -- split it by service providor.  For .CO.CA, I don't
>really know, though I guess the same answer could apply.....
>
>That raises another major objection I have to this all:  Why the hell
>should we double the confusion factor by having a ".CO.CA" which for
>all intents and purposes serves the same function as ".COM"????????

Well it is nice to wave the flag once in a while.

-- 
Stuart Lynne <sl@wimsey.com> ......................... UNIX Facsimile Software
Wimsey Information Technologies ................... moderator biz.sco.binaries
uucp login:nuucp passwd:nuucp .................... ftp.wimsey.com:~ftp/ls-lR.Z
PD Software for SCO UNIX .................... ftp.wimsey.com:~ftp/pub/wimseypd
Newsgroups: can.domain