geoff@FERNWOOD.MPK.CA.US (the tty of Geoff Goodfellow) (07/29/88)
US Domain Policy and Procedures - July 1988 (Revised)
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1. What is the US Domain and who is eligible to register?
The US domain is a new Top Level domain created for people in
the United States who have computers at home, or small local
corporations who would like to register their host
geographically. A large corporation with offices all over the
world would probably want to register with .COM.
2. How do you register a host in the US Domain?
Send a message to the US Domain Registrar (Westine@ISI.EDU).
She will send you a US Domain Questionnaire to fill out.
3. How is the Naming Scheme going to be set up for the US Domain
and it's subdivisions?
The US Domain is set up geographically, that is, states, cities,
etc. The state codes are those assigned by the US Postal
Service, and the city codes are Western Union's "City Mnemonics"
code that we will send to you. Another alternative for the city
code it to use the full name of your city.
For example: fernwood.mpk.ca.us (or)
fernwood.menlo-park.ca.us
4. Who will administer the US Domain and its subdivisions?
For now we will administer ALL OF THE US DOMAIN AND ITS
SUBDIVISIONS (i.e., states, cities etc.). The US Domain is just
getting started and we want to be careful about what names get
used and how control is allocated until some usage patterns are
established. We will run the servers for all the US domains.
At some future point we will hand off the administration of
individual states to appropriate responsible people, probably in
the state they administer.
5. Can I manage a Domain Group?
If you want to keep tabs on users in a certain group and to
register them say under "Houston" in the TX.US domain,
(joe@ACADEM.HOUSTON.TX.US) with "ACADEM" as the group you would
be managing, this would be ok. But you can't manage all
"HOUSTON" or all "TX", just your group. Also, you would have to
see that all the hosts in your group are registered with us, and
that each name is unique. If your hosts are not directly on the
internet we will need an MX record for each host pointing to an
internet host for forwarding.
6. How will the US Domain affect hosts in UUCP, CSNET and BITNET Zones?
If a host is registered in UUCP, BITNET, or CSNET Zone, it
doesn't need to register in the US domain, unless it wants to be
registered geographically. Only hosts on the internet can act
as forwarding hosts. Hosts on systems such as CSNET, UUCP,
BITNET, etc., must register their hosts with an internet host.
This is necessary because when messages for your host arrive at
the internet host it will need to know where to forward them.
MX records are necessary.
7. Can a host be in both the US Domain and another domain (like .EDU
or .COM)?
No. A host should have a single name. It is possible to have
"nicnames" for a brief period while a host name change is in
progress.