rayan@ai.toronto.edu (02/25/87)
For a long time now there has been a wish for Canada to have its very own top-level domain in the internet namespace. A few months ago, a small discussion group was assembled to discuss this matter to avoid one group or network going off on its own with a scheme the other nets wouldn't accept. The group consisted of one representative from each of CDNnet, NetNorth, DRE/DND (Defense Research Establishment), and the UUCP network. Since the UUCP net has no official organization looking after its interests, the UUCP map coordinator for Canada (me) was the closest thing to a representative. We are now very close to submitting the official domain registration, and this posting is intended to make site administrators aware of the current status of the discussions and summarize some of the issues that have come up. - What should the name be? There are two alternatives: CAN and CA. The standard for country level domains is to use the ISO 2-letter code of the country. The only exception so far has been Great Britain which is using UK instead of GB. The people who would approve the application for the Canadian domain have indicated that they will accept a request for CAN even though their guidelines recommend otherwise. The reason for this is that they recognize the confusion that would arise with CA since that is a well-known abbreviation of a very large U.S. state. The CDN name is not available since it was used by CDNnet when it was started up. Last year I conducted a private poll among sysadmins about which of CA or CAN they would prefer to see. The response was overwhelmingly in favour of CAN for the reason mentioned above. In the discussion group, NetNorth was in favor of CA, DND seemed indifferent though slightly favouring CA, CDNnet seemed indifferent though slightly favouring CAN, and UUCP (I) was arguing for CAN against CA. The sentiment at NetNorth and DND seemed to be that they thought CA would end up being the domain name in the X.400 world in the end, but CDNnet (the granddaddy X.400 network) did not express such an opinion. Since UUCP was strongly in favour of CAN and against CA, it was decided to settle on CAN. - What should the second level domains be? Choices were organizational, functional, and geographical second level domains (2LDs). Geographical domains were dismissed. NetNorth insisted (and still do) on becoming NETNORTH.CAN. DND wouldn't be affected by this issue since their functional and organizational 2LD would be the same. As for CDNnet and UUCP, we both agreed that organizational 2LDs would be most convenient, however I argued against it. Whereas CDNnet and NetNorth have a relatively small number of (large) similar institutions as members, the UUCP network embodies a large number of sites with diverse characteristics. Since the domain naming system is likely to be with us for a long long time, I argued in favour of functional 2LDs so the namespace could accomodate the expected growth over the next 2-N decades. There were other reasons for taking this position as well, for example several organizations with widely different functions having the same or similar name (e.g. city or provincial governments and universities). I believe there should be as many 2LDs as necessary to accomodate the various classes of sites, e.g. educational, business, government, private individuals, the military, the public carriers, etc. The present need would be for 2LD names for educational institutions, the military, and business. The Internet toplevel domains for these are EDU, MIL, and COM, whereas for example Great Britain has chosen AC (academic community) instead of EDU. I suggested that EDU et al would be more natural for the Canadian language than AC, and to use those as the first cut at a set of 2LDs. The number of 2LDs shouldn't be cast in stone. CDNnet went along with this (with DND indifferent and NetNorth still insisting on them getting NETNORTH.CAN and indifferent about what happened outside of their domain). CSNET has gratiously agreed to manage the necessary Internet nameserver information needed for the CAN domain, for the time being. Eventually, as Canadian Internet connections appear, we expect to move this responsibility to Canadian hosts. Just as with the present Internet domains (or any other proper domain), a host or site cannot simply claim a name within the CAN domain space. All names must be registered with the appropriate domain authority. For some of the (functional) 2LDs, the authority will be with a committee of representatives from each of the wide-area mail networks that have members in the 2LDs (or rather, that 'can have' members... - to avoid the bootstrap problem). For most/all organizations and institutions the authority would be delegated appropriately. The networks (primarily CDNnet and UUCP I expect) will coordinate the shared namespaces (e.g. under EDU.CAN). If you have comments on what you have read, please let me know. Hopefully we can get the domain registered and things rolling in relatively short order (it has taken months to get to this stage...). rayan -- Rayan Zachariassen AI group, University of Toronto (in no way representing either)