HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne)
Subject: Re: Domain naming conventions
Organization: Wimsey Information Services
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 21:34:07 GMT

In article <1993Jan07.211121.866@xenitec.on.ca> eah@xenitec.on.ca (Ed Hew) writes:
>In article <1993Jan6.193540.920@combdyn.com> lawrence@combdyn.com (Lawrence Chen) writes:
>Of course, when it comes to CA naming conventions, "guesses" just
>aren't good enough.  Since there is no "abbreviation list", the
>committee is going to have to develop one if abbreviations are to
>be allowed.

Actually with todays technology (DNS) supporting multiple abbreviations is
easy. It is very simple to setup a domain zone such that:

	xxxx.domain1.ca
	xxxx.domain2.ca

are maintained in the same file. For example here on van-bc we have two
domains. Wimsey.com and wimsey.bc.ca. We have one file that describes the
domain (all of the hosts, aliases, MX records etc) and have two lines
in named.boot which associate the domain information with two zones.

This implies that it would be easy to have a Port Moody zone that 
has names like:

	portmoody.bc.ca
	port-moody.bc.ca
	pomo.bc.ca
	pmoody.bc.ca

So even if people are only registered officially in portmoody.bc.ca all
of the following would work:

	sl@wimsey.portmoody.bc.ca
	sl@wimsey.port-moody.bc.ca
	sl@wimsey.pomo.bc.ca
	sl@wimsey.pmoody.bc.ca

I would suggest that it be a function of the person supporting the server
for a particular city to implement and maintain their server so that it
represents as many common abbreviations as are in use. The only caveat is
that he needs to officially register each with the server above him so
that we don't get collisions in the name space at that level.

Another thought. Everyone is talking about Domain Names etc. But if may
become more common in the future to simply request a mail forwarding
mailbox on a server. So 

	fred_smith@pomo.bc.ca

Might become fairly popular for private users. It's a little easier to
remember and type than:

	fred_smith@fsmith.pomo.bc.ca

This practice would reduce the need for large numbers of domain names at
the expense of implementing mailboxes or forwarding arrangements at the
city level. 

-- 
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: sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne)
Subject: Re: Q: organizational subdomains?
Organization: Wimsey Information Services
Distribution: can.domain
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 23:02:06 GMT

In article <C0DJBy.LAE@uunet.ca> smd@uunet.ca (Sean Doran) writes:
>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? 
>
>I like the idea of functional subdomains alot.  I doubt that my

I don't like them a lot. But view them as better than political 
geographic designations.

We could quible a bit over "co" vs "com" and "ac" vs "edu" etc. But
it doesn't matter too much which are used (perhaps both?). 

>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.

Sounds good. 

-- 
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: jstewart@alfred.carleton.ca (John Stewart)
Subject: Re: How portable are most sites going to be?
Organization: Carleton University
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 15:54:59 GMT

In <930110.021229.9h2.rusnews.w164w@alpha3.ersys.edmonton.ab.ca> russell@alpha3.ersys.edmonton.ab.ca (Russell Schulz) writes:

>[it was suggested I start a `longest FQDN contest'.  I'm resisting.  maybe]

That would be a waste of time since even the longest imaginable FQDN would
get its butt kicked by just about any X.400 OR name.  X.400 is clearly 
number one for long mail addresses.
-- 
John Stewart -- Computing and Communications Services, Carleton University
Internet: jstewart@ccs.carleton.ca or Mr.Canoehead@algonquin.carleton.ca  
"The average middle income family with two parents and children pays $2,945
more in Federal taxes than they would have under the tax policies in place
before the Tories first came to power in 1984."
Newsgroups: can.domain
From: eah@xenitec.on.ca (Ed Hew)
Subject: locality abbreviations (was Re: Domain naming conventions)
Organization: XeniTec Consulting, Kitchener, Ontario, CANADA
Date: Thu, 07 Jan 1993 21:23:32 GMT

In article <1993Jan6.224037.15946@sol.UVic.CA> klassen@sol.UVic.CA (Melvin Klassen) writes:
>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!

Four or five, or sometimes even two or three characters might be
adequate.  They need only be unique and generally accepted for a
given locality.  They don't all have to be the same length.

For example, "Kitchener-Waterloo" is generally accepted within the
community as "KW".  Most people I know abbreviate "Vancouver" to
"Van" when they feel like applying an abbreviation at all.  I'd
consider "Tor" as a logical abbreviation for "Toronto", "Miss" for
"Mississauga", "Ott" for "Ottawa", "Lon" for "London", although
in many of these instances I'd want to question why we would want
to bother abbreviating six character locality names.  Being semi-silly
for a moment, how would one abbreviate "Ayr" (a small Ontario
locality)?  Why bother?  IMHO, this discussion really only applies
to long, unwieldy locality names.

Getting back to the examples in the posting this is a follow-up to,
it's my opinion that since we don't have any sort of official list
to go by, the first applicant to ask for a particular reasonable
locality abbreviation would result in that abbreviation becoming
the "standard" for that locality.  So, if someone registers
foo.edm.ab.ca (vrs foo.edmonton.ab.ca), then both "edm" and "edmonton"
would forever more be the "official" allowable ways of specifying
Edmonton in CA domain registrations.  That implies that the first
organization in Port Moody to want to register a Port Moody subdomain
in large part gets to decide what the Port Moody abbreviation might
be codified to.

Please remember, all the above is IMHO.  Nothing on this has yet
been decided.

                --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
From: sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne)
Subject: Re: Domain naming conventions
Organization: Wimsey Information Services
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 06:23:58 GMT

In article <1993Jan5.000459.28821@analsyn.gts.org> anton@lethe.gts.org writes:
>In the article (<C0BnJ2.wA@wimsey.bc.ca>) Stuart Lynne (sl@wimsey.bc.ca) posted to can.domain:
>
>		<edhew> <at> <xenitec> <.kw.on.ca>
>
>You don't have to know where it is geographically.  That's for the
>administrators and people playing with routing.  Many site names don't
>have geography embded in them, but you still remeber then as 'chunks'.
>
>Now lets go to your example:
>
> 	sl@wimsey.v3h.ca  is seven chunks.
>
>		<sl> <at> <wimsey> <v> <3> <h> <.ca>

I totally and utterly fail to see how someone who has no knowledge of
southern ontario geography will find <.kw.on.ca> one chunk (to use
your term) while v3h.ca ends up as four. How does "kw". I suppose to
an English speaker "on" might be one chunk. But "kw". ????

So lets break it up like you do:

		<edhew> <at> <xenitec> <k><w><on><ca>

Hmm... about the same.  Of course it really should be kitchener not kw.

We also must get down to some basic questions here:

	a) what is the purpose of a domain name
	b) why do we need very specific guidelines
	c) what is the objection to allowing choice

My point is that not everyone is happy with the current guidelines. There
may be less people happy with the proposed changes (adding city). Why
does there have to be only one guideline? So far all I've seen are rebuttals
of the premise that I would want this type of address. Not that it can't
work in a technical sense. So what is the problem. If someone *wants* to
use a different set of guidelines for some reason what is the 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
From: andrew@herald.usask.ca (Derek Andrew,,,)
Newsgroups: can.domain
Subject: The Left Hand Side
Date: 7 Jan 1993 08:05:27 GMT
Organization: University of Saskatchewan
Reply-To: andrew@herald.usask.ca
NNTP-Posting-Host: herald.usask.ca
Originator: andrew@herald.usask.ca

I know this is the wrong newsgroup for this query but it is the best
I have. I see a lot of thought in the on going discussions of what is
to appear on the right hand side of the @ symbol, but what about the
left hand side?

Currently, my address is Andrew@Sask.USask.CA. I am the only andrew
on that machine so no problem. However, we have a multitude of Smiths
and can only have one Smith@Sask.USask.CA. We are looking to expanding
the left hand side to be something like John_Smith@Sask.USask.CA. The
next John Smith might be John.Q.Smith@Sask.USask.CA. 

So far so good -- until recently. Someone pointed out that the period
is not a good punctuation character on the left hand side because of
some sort of difficulty in sending to X.400 sites. Can anybody confirm 
this? Is anyone else looking at this problem? What do you do at your
sites?

Thanks for your time and efforts on this problem. I hope we can reach
some sort of concensious and establish some sort of convention across
the net.

dfa

-- 
Derek Andrew, Manager of Computer Network & Technical Services
University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon Saskachewan, Canada, S7N 0W0
Andrew@Sask.USask.CA, +1-306-966-4808,  52 11 23N 106 48 48W
Our prayers are with all who stood in Andrew's path. - President Bush.
Newsgroups: can.domain
From: eah@xenitec.on.ca (Ed Hew)
Subject: Re: locality abbreviations
Organization: XeniTec Consulting, Kitchener, Ontario, CANADA
Date: Sat, 09 Jan 1993 13:03:33 GMT

In article <388@unbc.edu> lyndon@unbc.edu (Lyndon Nerenberg) writes:
>So what was the reasoning behind univ.prov.ca?

I believe that John Demco answered that question.

}Doesn't this fly in the face
>of getting a second level registration if your scope covers more than
>one province?

We've hacked on the concept of "scope" at great length in committee
over the last couple of months.  Again.  I perceive the difficulty has
been in trying to define "scope" in a way that's fair to all types of
organizations, be they Universities, government organizations, large
corporations, small businesses, or anything in between.  I'd really
like to ask you to await the next iteration of the CA registration
guidelines and application form and then comment on how you would
suggest wording to accomodate fair application of "scope".  What
tests (that _everyone_ will agree on) can be applied to determine
what is indeed correct for _any_ given organization?

>Perhaps the .CA name Czars know more about my place of employment
>than I do, but last time *I* looked we did course delivery on-site in Alberta
>as well as B.C.  And then there is Athabasca University which does course
>delivery via local tutors in BC and Alberta (at the least), and whose mandate
>is distance education course delivery throughout the entire country. And I'm
>sure Waterloo has correspondence students outside of Ontario.

Right now, "course delivery" isn't considered a valid test, although
you can certainly propose it if you find a way whereby all possible
ramifications can be applied to any type of organization.  Given that
one is trying to expand the hierarchy to accomodate grown, consider
what you will do when Joe's Courier Service wants to argue that he
has affiliation agreements that allow him to deliver packages all over
the planet.  Obviously, in Joe's mind, he's as entitled to a national
subdomain as a University might argue.

Is Joe == University == national_organization, or do these three
legimately live at different levels within the CA hierarchy?

>BTW - the .CA master nameserver will be renamed to relay.cdnnet.vancouver.bc.ca
>to conform with the new guidelines, won't it?

As I've previously stated, the most recent draft of the guidelines
explicitly state that there will be zero involuntary re-registrations.

                --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
From: sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne)
Subject: Re: Domain naming conventions
Organization: Wimsey Information Services
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 21:28:16 GMT

In article <1993Jan04.163725.13070@xenitec.on.ca> eah@xenitec.on.ca (Ed Hew) writes:
>In article <C0BnJ2.wA@wimsey.bc.ca> sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne) writes:
	....
>Let's reduce that further to 2 chars which are coincidentally more
>meaningful given a modicum of knowledge on Canadian geography.
>As in:
>	wimsey.bc.ca
>
>That's
>	bc
>
>Now, that's even easier, isn't it? :-)

Sure. Although in an increasingly world wide email network I'm sure that
there are a large number of potential correspondants (I was tempted to 
say business contacts, but I guess that is not PC) that couldn't name 
more than one or two provinces and would have no idea what the 
abbreviations are. I.e. their modicum of knowledge is probably limited
to Canada, Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, and maybe (I hope) Vancouver.

I'm led to believe (inside sources and all that) that there are 
suggestions to make addresses like org.municp.prov.ca the norm. Currently
they are being suggested only for organizations with limited scope of
operation.s.

If we look at the US domain they use the same convention. But apply it
uniformly. I.e. they would require IBM.Armonk.NY.US not IBM.US. This is
probably a better and fairer way to do things. It leads to less debates
about whether a particular organization is privileged enough to be at 
a higher level.

I'll go out on the limb and guess that some of the sour grapes over the 
current convention is that everyone would like to be org.ca, but only a
few organizations qualify. Leaving those that don't a bit envious. 

The US Domain eliminates this by requiring everyone to use the same 
notation: org.city.state.US.

So. Yes I'll agree that keeping it to org.prov.CA would be fine by me.
It does reduce the server load on average by 10 (although the larger domains
like on.ca will probably end up being 25% of the total .ca namespace).
But it seems that the current committee is not satisfied that this will
be sufficient. And wants to add the third level (municpality). Which brings
us full circle. to where we started.

BTW I received a note from Jon Postel (co-author of RFC1886) this morning 
re: making reservations in .US. He basically said it "is not appropriate". 

>From: postel@ISI.EDU (Jon Postel)
>In the US domain, a subdomain can either be delegated (NS records) or
>registered directly (MX or A records), but not both.  It is not appropriate
>to register simply to reserve a name for future use.

-- 
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: timk@tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (Tim Kuehn)
Subject: Re: Domain naming conventions
Organization: TDK Consulting Services
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 23:17:39 GMT

In article <C0Iutq.LDH@wimsey.bc.ca> sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne) writes:
>In article <1993Jan8.002358.21390@tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca> timk@tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (Tim Kuehn) writes:
>>> 003316g@dragon.acadiau.ca (Steve Gregory) writes:
>>toplevel domains, then you should look into that and not try to make 
>>.ca do things it's not really intended to do. 
>And where is is writ in stone what it is intended to do. 

Near as I can tell, it isn't. This is part of the problem of designing 
a naming convetion -- we're not even sure what we're trying to accomplish 
here!

My pre-supposition is that we're trying to design a naming convention
under .ca which is 

	- easily scaleable to massively larger (at least 10x to 100x) 
	  larger numbers of registrants
	- generates names that are easy to remember 
	- has an easy-to-remember generation rules 

(This is one of the problems I have with functional naming 
conventions versus geographical naming conventions. Functionality 
will change a *lot* faster than geographical locations ever will. :)

>That what free speech and democracy is all about.

I have no problem with people voicing their opinions. But I reserve
the right to kindly suggest they take problems better solved to other
domains rather than try to contort an already geographical domain 
(doesn't .ca mean "Canada"? And isn't Canada a geographical region?)
into something much hard to get one's mind around, not to mention will
be increasingly difficult to scale to a larger user base as time goes 
on.

Just like you, I have my freedom of speech too. ;-)

>Stuart Lynne <sl@wimsey.com> ......................... UNIX Facsimile Software

 +-----------+-----------------------------------+---------------------------+
 | Tim Kuehn | TDK Consulting Services           | timk@tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca |
 | <><       | Ask me about news and mail in KW! | (519)-888-0766            |
 +-----------+-----------------------------------+---------------------------+
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 00:04:59 GMT

In the article (<C0BnJ2.wA@wimsey.bc.ca>) Stuart Lynne (sl@wimsey.bc.ca) posted to can.domain:

: Now try and reduce the number to 3 characters which is what I'm suggesting.
: As in:
: 	wimsey.v3h.ca

: That's
: 	V 3 H

I think you've missed the point, Stuart.
Where talking about cognitive chunking, not number of keystrokes,
because were are discussing remebering them.  If you want to minimise
keystrokes you'd be better off reworking some of the awkward and long
fangled spellings in Engligh - color/colour and such like.

To go back to the main thread...

	edhew@xenitec.kw.on.ca is 4 chunks ...

		<edhew> <at> <xenitec> <.kw.on.ca>

You don't have to know where it is geographically.  That's for the
administrators and people playing with routing.  Many site names don't
have geography embded in them, but you still remeber then as 'chunks'.

Now lets go to your example:

 	sl@wimsey.v3h.ca  is seven chunks.

		<sl> <at> <wimsey> <v> <3> <h> <.ca>

The way we say it is a demonstration of the chunking: 

	"vee"  "three"  "aich"

Now not all TLAs are like this.  Some do make single chunks, "IBM" ,
"MIT", "NCR", "ATnT".  They chunk if we can remeber them as a single
entity.   We don't do this with postalcodes because there are all the 
permutations...   vh3, vh4 vh5 vh6 vh7.

Some one else in this thread said it right when he pointed out this is
cogsci 101.  Most of the pimary work on this kind of 'ergonomics' was
done before you or I were born (assuming you're under 45).  The fact
that it isn't taught and diseminiated more is a shame on our education
system.  It is not to be taken to mean that it doesn't apply, or can't
be important enough.  
--
Anton J Aylward						anton@uunorth.north.net
	"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
Distribution: can
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 06:25:42 GMT

In article <1993Jan04.034425.12234@xenitec.on.ca> eah@xenitec.on.ca (Ed Hew) writes:
>In article <C09rxK.97w@wimsey.bc.ca> sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne) writes:

>The Postal Code book in front of me as I type this has all the Canadian
>Municipalities listed using their full names.  Unfortunately, I can't
>seem to find a single city abbreviation therein, just postal codes.
>I should state that the copy I have is a few years old, however verbal
>information from Canada Post employees suggests that the current copy
>is the same, just a bit larger.
>
>Thanks for trying. :-)

I was suggesting that the postal codes (first three digits) would be
quite a reasonable code from an official government source. I.e. it's
short and everyone has one (and hopefully with only a few exceptions)
and only one.

-- 
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