brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (02/06/84)
Area codes are an antiquated system built many years ago by Telco designed to be used from a keyboard with only digits on it. We have modern computers that can use more than the full alphabet. To suggest using this very old system is a bit silly in my mind. It becomes especially silly if you consider already well named regions that have just one area code. Why send to user@site.403 when you could send to user@site.alberta? I can't think of any reason for using the number. In the case of a region like Ontario, which has five area codes, we can still easily divide the area. I think that something like city does a good job myself, and I don't think that the cities in a given state or province will ever be that hard to keep track of. The only advantage to area codes is that they already exist and many people know them. Sad to say, most people don't know any but the more common ones, and would have to look them up in a database. Finally, use of area codes forces us to build our routing information along arbitrary Telco lines that have no meaning to our network structure. Why should one computer in Mountain View, CA (415) be in a different domain than the one down the block in Sunnyvale (408)? I think "bay.california" or "silicon_valley.california" is a much better name. Of course, we can alias in area codes for those who want them, but we should not make them the only supported system.. -- Brad Templeton - Waterloo, Ontario (519) 886-7304