Vshank%Weizmann.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA (Henry Nussbacher) (11/24/85)
Let us just look at the facts and come to some conclusion. 1) Europe and the rest of the world will be using 2 letter country codes as their upper level domains and something known as "Administrartion Domain Name" as their 2nd level qualifier. 2) Some domains currently in existence span many countries. Now let us look a little down the road (say, 3 years): X400 and RFC822/920 have a number of gateways in existence. A piece of mail arrives from user@seismo.css.gov and is destined for someplace in X400-land. Do you know what the gateway will end up doing? It will add in a .US after gov so the people in x400-land will know which gateway to send their mail back to. They will not recognize gov and edu and org and all the other upper level domains that Arpanet has decided on. Let us look at some international mailing examples: 1) Telephone: Whereever you are in the world (and you have direct dialing) and you want to call another country, you specify 4 numbers: a - a number(s) to get the internation exchange b - some number or numbers to specify the country code c - some number or numbers to spcify the area within the country d - the actual number you are calling Just imagine if country XYZZY said we wish our politicians to have a seperate b-number different from our country code since that is the way we like it and since we have a very valid technical need for it. b) Mail: Whenever you send postal mail overseas, you have to specify a country at the bottom of the envelope. Not the person's work organization - no matter how big or important it may be. Europe and America have been at odds on many standards and all that has resulted from it is nothing! American TV's cannot be plugged into a German outlet and a French wrench doesn't do much good on an American bicycle. Here we have a chance to start something new and have everyone agree on an international standard. Multinational domains (like Csnet and Bitnet) will have to learn to live with upper level addresses like csnet.US or bitnet.IL. Let's not blow it now and make the same mistakes all over again. Hank
joel@gould9.UUCP (Joel West) (11/27/85)
In article <16@brl-tgr.ARPA>, Vshank%Weizmann.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA (Henry Nussbacher) writes: > 1) Europe and the rest of the world will be using 2 letter country codes > as their upper level domains and something known as "Administrartion > Domain Name" as their 2nd level qualifier. > 2) Some domains currently in existence span many countries. > > Now let us look a little down the road (say, 3 years): X400 and RFC822/920 > have a number of gateways in existence. A piece of mail arrives from > user@seismo.css.gov and is destined for someplace in X400-land. Do you > know what the gateway will end up doing? It will add in a .US after > gov so the people in x400-land will know which gateway to send their mail > back to. They will not recognize gov and edu and org and all the other > upper level domains that Arpanet has decided on. I think it is becoming more obvious that electronic mail will eventually comprise a multi-domain system, including: ARPA BITNET UUCP MCI Mail Western Union etc. etc. etc. Whatever is done with the UUCP world should be compatible with X.400 (or its successors) so we don't have to junk it and change the rules a few years down the road. One such transition will be horrendous enough, thank you. -- Joel West (619) 457-9681 CACI, Inc. Federal, 3344 N. Torrey Pines Ct., La Jolla, CA 92037 {cbosgd,ihnp4,pyramid,sdcsvax,ucla-cs}!gould9!joel gould9!joel@nosc.ARPA