HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne)
Subject: Re: Geographic Naming Conventions Considered Harmful
Organization: Wimsey Information Services
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 06:38:51 GMT

In article <1993Jan05.043626.22116@xenitec.on.ca> vances@xenitec.on.ca (Vance Shipley) writes:
>follow the network topology.  Even in this case it is an issue of easing the
>administration of the network.
>
>I'll go along with naming schemes which reflect the realities of the networking
>topology and technologies in use.  However I can't see the sense in imposing
>geography on cyberspace.  It's like requiring cellular telephone users to be
>called using street addresses.

Yes. My points exactly. I first asked for a ".ca" address back in 1987. And
ended up with a .bc.ca address. While xxx.ca is not that different from the
style of addresses that US companies use (xxx.com), xxx.bc.ca starts to 
become noticeable. So where one is waving the flag, the other starts to be
a case of hitting them on the head with the flagpole.

Imposing political geography on the name space is totally in line with 
governmental control. It is a view promulgated by CCITT and ISO because
it fit's well with their view (and the views of the member PTT's) of 
controlling things. Personally I don't think that's the type of future 
I'm interested in.

To quote from the CA-Domain Introduction:

} The third system is the naming structure of the CCITT X.500 and ISO
} 9594 collaborative recommendations on distributed directory services.
} We are concerned mainly with the structure of the Directory
} Information Tree.  Here is a simplified description of the structure:
} - Subordinate to the root are organizations and countries.
} - Subordinate to a country are organizations and subtrees of
}   localities.
} - Subordinate to a locality are organizations.
} - Subordinate to an organization are organizational persons and a
}   subtree of organizational units.
} - Subordinate to an organizational unit are organizational persons.
} - Subordinate to a locality are residential persons.
} In other words, the tree may be described as geographical with
} organizations attached at any level, and with persons attached below
} organizations and localities.  Note again that this is a simplification
} of the actual structure, and of course the entire standard deals with
} much more than that structure.

Which is the model used with slight modifications.

-- 
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
From: lyndon@unbc.edu (Lyndon Nerenberg)
Newsgroups: can.domain
Subject: Re: Domain naming conventions
Summary: Why the need for geographic domains, anyway?
Date: 6 Jan 93 23:41:29 GMT
Organization: University of Northern B.C.


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.

I also want to take issue with the "longer is better" argument for domain
names. There is an implicit assumption here that everyone a) knows the
geography of Canada and, b) speaks english.

Which of the following is easier to remember:

	foo@cs.vu.nl
	foo@informatik.uni-dortmund.de

Both addresses describe the same level of an organization. Personally I
can't even pronounce what the "vu" stands for let alone remember how to
spell it. For a Scandanavian the same applies to "prince-george.bc.ca"
vs. "pg.bc.ca."

--lyndon
Newsgroups: can.domain
From: eah@xenitec.on.ca (Ed Hew)
Subject: Committee Discussion Archives (was Re: (large) Re: Q: organizational subdomains?)
Organization: XeniTec Consulting, Kitchener, Ontario, CANADA
Date: Thu, 07 Jan 1993 22:08:19 GMT

In article <C0I6r3.JJ8@wimsey.bc.ca> sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne) writes:
>Wouldn't it be nice if we could see the CA Domain Committee's archives?

It certainly would be!  To this end, I initiated discussion at the
committee level a while back.  At this time the discussion has evolved
towards which mechanisms might be best used to facilitate this.

Speaking strictly for myself, I get the distinct impression that
no one on the committee is violently opposed to public perusal of
CA Domain Committee discussions, although there has been substantial
comment that making this available should be done in such a manner
as to not preclude performance of the daily duties and necessary
operation of the committee.  For example, we don't want to do anything
that might delay approval of applications.

In general, I might speculate that some form of public availability
may happen in the near future.  The exact form it will take is still
somewhat undecided.  Caveat:  never count un-barbequed chickens.
I only comment in response to these continued queries.  I really
shouldn't be saying any of this until things are actually settled.

                --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: Geographic Naming Conventions Considered Harmful
Date: 7 Jan 93 00:08:25 GMT
Organization: University of Northern B.C.

> The situation would be different if municipalities maintained MANs (Municipal 
> Area Network) connected by WANs (Wide Area Network) run by the provincial
> governments which were all connected to a federal government run backbone.
> In this scenario there are valid reasons to enforce naming conventions which
> follow the network topology.  Even in this case it is an issue of easing the
> administration of the network.

No it isn't. The purpose of domain names is to isolate logical
entities from the underlying network topology. If the above was
true we would all just use IP addresses. (And in the US, a persons phone
number would change when they switched carriers.)

--lyndon
From: anton@analsyn.gts.org (Anton J Aylward)
Subject: Re: locality abbreviations 
Reply-To: anton@lethe.gts.org
Organization: ASCI: UNIX Database and Communications
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8]
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 01:09:34 GMT

In the article (<3y8wwB3w165w@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca>) Dave McCrady (davem@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca) posted to can.domain:
: timk@tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (Tim Kuehn) writes:

: - 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.

:    Good question.  That's why I suggested "closest" airport in the original 
: post.  Finding out the three-character designation is a phone call to 
: the airport or to any airline or flying club .. or a look at an airline 
: schedule.  Not a difficult piece of research.  Certainly no more difficult
: than coming up with the map co-ordinates required for a uumap application.

Remeber the logical ass?
Its not that difficult to be midway between two airports, unless you want
to measure in millimeters ;-)

Same arguments as for postalcodes, on both sides, mutated a bit.

--
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: locality abbreviations (was Re: What is this group for?)
Organization: Wimsey Information Services
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 01:17:58 GMT

In article <93Jan04.222358.34201@acs.ucalgary.ca> kozlowsk@acs.ucalgary.ca (Don M. Kozlowski) writes:
>In article <C0BpBB.4IK@wimsey.bc.ca> sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne) writes:
>>Lot's faster to type in the XeniTec.Kitchanar.on.ca too.
>where on.ca is, and although I'm not sure where Kitchanar is, I

Oop's. Guess I copied that in wrong. I meant to type in

	XeniTec.Kitchener.on.ca

>I guess my point is, if you want to save typing use short cryptic
>addresses and carry around a copy of the postal codes. If you

This is the second or third time someone has said that you would
need to carry around a copy of the postal codes. What for? 

I didn't have have a copy of the postal code book to find out that 
your postal code is T2N 1N4.

>want something meaningful use a name that means something. If you
>don't like typing long names use a table of aliases. That's the
>beauty of using computers.

Of course this is also an argument against political geographic
designations of any kind. Let's harness the power that computers
give us so that we don't have to use political geographic
designations.

-- 
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: bugs@atlantis.uucp (Dan Berry)
Subject: Re: locality abbreviations 
Organization: Atlantis Communications, Edmonton, AB, Canada
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8]
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 06:46:56 GMT

Dave McCrady (davem@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca) wrote:
>    At the risk of stirring still more mud into the mix, has anyone 
> considered using the nearest airport as a location code?  The three-
> letter codes stamped on your baggage tags?  They're understood and 
> accepted as meaningful internationally, at least by airline people 
> and meteorologists and could even begin to mean something to the rest
> of us if we started using them.  
>    And there are nowhere near as many of them to contend with as postal
> codes.
>    It would instantly shorten my site address to ersys.yeg.ca (the real
> one appears below) ... and we could probably dispense with the .ca.

This is a prime example why this SHOULDN'T be done.
"YEG" is the airport code for the Edmonton International Airport, a major
airport some 20 (guesstimated) kilometers away from the city of Edmonton.

"YFG" is the airport code for the Edmonton Municipal Airport, a smaller (but
still somewhat major; jets land there) located 5km away FROM THE CITY CORE.

Dave, I'm not sure if you remembered it or not, but if you as a fellow
Edmontonian forgot about the Muni then how is a non-dweller going to?  I don't
suspect that the Muni (or others like it in other cities) are listed anywhere
else but in maps available to aviators, or city maps.  National maps won't
have it.
-- 
Dan Berry			bugs%atlantis@kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca
==============================> bugs@atlantis.uucp  =========================
"On a first date, watch how your date treats the waiter, the bartender,
	and so on.  That's how she'll be treating YOU after three months."
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 12:17:34 GMT

In the article (<1993Jan5.174007.6132@tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca>) Tim Kuehn (timk@tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca) posted to can.domain:

: However, if we took the first four letters of all the city name(s), 
: would that generate a unique identifier within a province? For example, 

: Medicine Hat 	= medihat

: Toronto 	= toro
: Waterloo 	= wate 
: St Catherines 	= stcath 
: Kitchener 	= kitc
: Hamiltion 	= hami 
: Wentworth 	= went 
: London 		= lond

: Vancouver	= vanc

TLAs are regognized for many of the above,

	tor, lon, van

	and kw for Kitchener-Waterloo

Have you looked at what DHL and their competitors use ?

--
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: 003316g@dragon.acadiau.ca (Steve Gregory)
Subject: Re: The Left Hand Side
Organization: Acadia University
Distribution: can
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 20:02:33 GMT

003316g@dragon.acadiau.ca (Steve Gregory) writes:

>mills@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Gary Mills) writes:

>>In <1igo87INNmpp@access.usask.ca> andrew@herald.usask.ca (Derek Andrew,,,) writes:


>As an experiment could someone e-mail me two messages. One addressed to
>"003316g@dragon.acadiau.ca" and one addressed "steve.gregory@acadiau.ca".
>Thanks.

    The test was a success. Melvin Klassen "klassen@sol.uvic.ca" sent me
mail to both of my address and I recieved them both.
Thank you, for helping me figure this out.

( Oh ya, you don't *all* have to send me test-mail anymore. )

>-- 

>steve.gregory@acadiau.ca 
>Help my .sig file has left me and is seeking a divorce, what should I do ?
>< She claims I've been seeing another .sig! >
-- 

steve.gregory@acadiau.ca 
Help my .sig file has left me and is seeking a divorce, what should I do ?
< She claims I've been seeing another .sig! >
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
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 15:37:18 GMT

demco@cs.ubc.ca (John Demco) writes:
> 
> There is no question that functional subdomains can be used: they are
> used in other countries.  But to me they have some drawbacks, some of
> which I'll list here in no particular order:
[...]
> - Some organizations can fit into more than one functional category.
> One may ask "So what?" to which one answer is that it can be
> confusing.

But that's equally true for geographical categories, I believe.

> - One reason to use a subdomain is so that authority can be delegated,
> 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?

A fair question, but one that also applies to geographical subdomains.
I'll grant, however, that many of CA*net's member nets are provincial
networks, so perhaps we do have some of the substructure already in place
for delegating provincial subdomains...

> In general I agree with the assessment of functional subdomains made
> by one of the CA domain committee members: "They're artificial."

To be fair, any categorization of sites is artificial here in
Cyberspace.  Nevertheless, subdivision of the ca namespace is necessary
for practical reasons.

John makes a good point when he says that the effects on users and on
manageability should govern our choice; he claims that geographical
subdomains are more manageable, and since he's among the most
experienced of us with respect to DNS management, I have to take his
argument very seriously, even though I kind of like the idea of
functional subdomains.

Geographical or functional, I can live with either, but please, please,
let's drop the ideas of postal codes and airports!  :-)

-- 
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: 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: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 12:25:20 GMT

In the article (<C0CAr4.Hr4@ccu.umanitoba.ca>) Budi Rahardjo (rahardj@ccu.umanitoba.ca) posted to can.domain:

: There's also another problem. If I move say 10 blocks away, do I have
: to change my domain ?

Yes.
If you move one block, in the right direction, or just across the
street, your postal code could change.
If you are a corporation and expand to another floor of a tower building
your postal code could change.
If you grow insize and your volume of mail grow, CPC could assign you a
postalcode of your own.

--
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: rahardj@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Budi Rahardjo)
Subject: Re: Domain naming conventions
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 17:18:40 GMT

In <C0BnJ2.wA@wimsey.bc.ca> sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne) writes:

>	wimsey.v3h.ca

>That's
>	V 3 H

>Now that's not hard is it :-)

It's not hard for you, but hard for me.
If I want to send you a mail, I have to think...
was that v3h ? or v8h ? or v3e ... it's easier for me to remember 'bc'.

There's also another problem. If I move say 10 blocks away, do I have
to change my domain ?

-- budi
-- 
Budi Rahardjo <Budi_Rahardjo@UManitoba.Ca>
Unix Support - Computer Services - University of Manitoba
Newsgroups: can.domain
From: smd@uunet.ca (Sean Doran)
Subject: Re: Q: organizational subdomains?
Organization: UUNET Canada
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 22:47:13 GMT
Distribution: can.domain

hooper@ccs.QueensU.CA (Andy Hooper) writes:

>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.

Great!  This gets us a pair of new nameserver machines; one south and
one north of the border!

The current NIC is saddled with two problems; the first is that
they've inherited a crusty, not-well-maintained database from the
previous NIC, and have been having problems with lossy data and so
forth.  Also, the current NIC does more than hand out subdomains of
COM, ORG, EDU, MIL and so forth; domreg is the least of GSI's worries;
running MILNet and related activities is much more of a chore.

I have no plans to hand out IP addrs; there is already a Canadian
registrar who does an amazingly good job of that.  I have no plans to
hand out AS numbers, because the NIC is doing that now (and so is
CA*Net, north of the border).  I have no plans to manage a whois
database that includes NICNames.  I have no plans to archive the
documents that the NIC is called upon to do.

All I intend to do is gather POC info for my purposes, a pair (or
more) of nameservers, an SOA record from each of those nameservers,
and voila;  just add water and start named, and away you go.

ns.uu.net currently does primary and secondary nameservice for about
6000 zones.  It does primary and secondary nameservice for a few
countries, too.  I doubt very much that something like co.ca would
cause it any more pain than the domains that both UUNET Technologies
and UUNET Canada put on it, and certainly less than it does now with
the other root UUCP domain servers.

I think you overestimate the amount of work.  I may be prone to
underestimate the work publically, but the DNS is no stranger to me.
I have no doubt though that co.ca could run quite reasonably given the
current growth figures of CA-DOM multiplied by a suitably largeish
figure, even factoring in the Canadian contingent of things in the
NIC's top-level-domains.

>Do you have an idea
>on how to subdivide the work when it gets to be too much?

When will this be, in your opinion?  Bear in mind that co.ca's
nameservers will only carry NS RRs.

>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.

Great!  Point them at us.  :-)

	Sean.
Newsgroups: can.domain
From: sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne)
Subject: Re: Domain naming conventions
Organization: Wimsey Information Services
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 02:44:13 GMT

In article <C0Iu73.1I9@uunet.ca> smd@uunet.ca (Sean Doran) writes:
>davidf@golem.waterloo.on.ca (David J. Fiander) writes:

>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.

If we assume that the size of the ca-domain will double each year it
would indicate that the domain committee is setting themselves up to
vette about two applications per working day this year, four next 
year, eight the year after. One wonders when they will get sick and
tired of rigidly applying rules and come up with something that can
be rubber stamped by one person quickly.

>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.  

My assumption is that the bandwidth of almost all of the technology
involved (CPU speed, network speed, RAM size, disk space, etc) is
increasing as fast or faster than the growth of the ca-domain. There 
is also the improvements that can (and will be made) to improve the 
performance of the DNS.

>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.

Another case of a solution looking for a problem.

-- 
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
Distribution: can
Date: Sat, 09 Jan 1993 14:21:42 GMT

In article <C0GtoD.6r4@wimsey.bc.ca> sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne) writes:
>In article <384@unbc.edu> lyndon@unbc.edu (Lyndon Nerenberg) writes:
>>
Actually, I originally wrote the next two lines.
>>> 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???

Yes.  In my case, Rayan asked me to assume his previous committee
duties, I agreed, and as a result was invited by John Demco to join
the CA Domain Committee.

>So what is the current membership list?

Watch can.domain for publication of the current membership list, RSN.

>What is the length of each members term?

As far as I know, once on the committee, you're on it until you resign.

>Who chooses who to invite?

The CA Domain Registrar, John Demco, makes this decision, presumably
with input from various sources.

>What are the rules?

"rules"?

>How can we join so we have some say? 

In an indirect way, you already have, in that can.domain has become
recommending reading for the committee membership, and we hope that
more participation will result.  Useful comments from this newsgroup
started to make it into committee discussions almost immediately, and
I would hope that this trend will continue.

As for direct committee membership, I suppose that would be something
you would have to take up with the CA Registrar.

                --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>
Newsgroups: can.domain