nauen@WRAIR-EMH1.ARMY.MIL ("1159-DIRECTOR/OVERSEAS OPS") (06/27/91)
In <1991Jun25.182614.6784@agate.berkeley.edu> wisner@mica.Berkeley.EDU (Bill Wisner) says > I'll now repeat an offer I've made before (and Karl Kleinpaste has made > quite often): if any UUCP site out there wants a domain, contact me. I > will personally see that it is registered, arrange for nameservers, and if > necessary even provide MX forwarding. And I'll do this all for free. and in <1991Jun25.220349.26030@mthvax.cs.miami.edu> wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (David Lesher) responds > This is an outstanding offer, and one I'd like to avail myself of. I > will be moving back to the DC area soon. I have an account on a UUCP > site, but none on an Internet-connected one. I'm thinking up starting > up my own, and need a MX host local to the DC area. Where do I call? > (Anywhere in the metro DC - i.e. 703/202/301 flat rate call will do.) > [For that matter, the existing .UUCP site would love one too....] I don't suppose there's a list or newsgroup for hosts who want to volunteer to be forwarders? ;-}) But that's not really why I post. As of last night, 1,864 .COM subdomains were registered with nic.ddn.mil. I suspect that many of these subdomains have been created because of the increasing interest in having a domain name and that quite a few may consist of only one machine. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but I'm curious as to why more emphasis hasn't been placed on the .US domain option. It might be just the ticket for a situation such as David describes, but appears, at least to an "outsider", to be languishing. Btw, my knowledge about the .US domain comes primarily from the file NETINFO:US-DOMAIN.TXT, which can be ftp'd from NIC.DDN.MIL or ordered by mail To: service@nic.ddn.mil Subj: netinfo us-domain.txt A fact sheet from that file is extracted below. Ric <nauen@wrair-emh1.army.mil> <nauen%wrmain.decnet@detrick-emh1.army.mil> ^^^^^Walter Reed Army Institute of Research -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- US Domain Policy and Procedures - September 1988 ------------------------------------------------ 1. What is the US Domain and who is eligible to register? The US domain is a 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 over much of the country or 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 set up for the US Domain and its 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 is to use the full name of your city. For example: academ.hou.tx.us (or) academ.houston.tx.us 4. Who will administer the US Domain and its subdivisions? For now, the US Domain and all of its subdivisions (i.e., states, cities etc.) are managed by the US Domain Registrar. 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? The organizer of a group (or "domain park") of users with individual hosts can help by acting as the coordinator of the group and forwarding all the information for the group to the US Domain Registrar. The explicit specific information for each host in the group must be provided. And all fully qualified names must be unique. If your host is not directly on the internet an MX record is required pointing to an internet host for forwarding. For example: JOES-HOST.ACADEM.HOU.TX.US MX 10 GAZETTE.BCM.TMC.EDU SAMS-HOST.ACADEM.HOU.TX.US MX 10 GAZETTE.BCM.TMC.EDU Wild card records are not currently allowed in the US domain. If you want to keep tabs on individual hosts in a certain group and to register them say under "Houston" in the TX.US domain, for example, JOES-HOST.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. 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, (e.g., AUVM.AUVM.EDU in the BITNET Zone or TWWELLS.COM in the UUCP 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 for mail exchange with an internet host. This is necessary because when messages for them 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. 8. What does it cost? Currently, there is no cost for registering in the US Domain. For more information about the US domain please contact Ann Westine at WESTINE@ISI.EDU.
les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) (06/28/91)
In article <9106270056.AA09258@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> nauen@WRAIR-EMH1.ARMY.MIL ("1159-DIRECTOR/OVERSEAS OPS") writes: >As of last night, 1,864 .COM subdomains were registered with nic.ddn.mil. >I suspect that many of these subdomains have been created because of the >increasing interest in having a domain name and that quite a few may consist >of only one machine. Or the general refusal of internet-connected sites to exchange mail with anyone who isn't registered... Somehow the value of turning the flat .UUCP space into a flat .COM namespace escapes me. >Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but I'm curious as >to why more emphasis hasn't been placed on the .US domain option. I think the following is the main reason: > Wild card records are not currently allowed in the US domain. People who go to all the trouble of setting up their uucp software to handle domain style addressing want the added benefit of being able to add their own subdomains without being required to coordinate it with anyone else. A wild-card MX lets you do whatever you want behind the gateway. Les Mikesell les@chinet.chi.il.us
andy@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Andy S Poling) (06/29/91)
In article <9106270056.AA09258@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> nauen@WRAIR-EMH1.ARMY.MIL ("1159-DIRECTOR/OVERSEAS OPS") writes: [...] >As of last night, 1,864 .COM subdomains were registered with nic.ddn.mil. >I suspect that many of these subdomains have been created because of the >increasing interest in having a domain name and that quite a few may consist >of only one machine. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but I'm curious as >to why more emphasis hasn't been placed on the .US domain option. We feed a number of small sites (read one machine) mail via UUCP. Rather than having each of them register a domain name for their machine, I have put them in the uucp.jhu.edu subdomain. Of course, if they have a domain name of their own that's fine too. This way, all of their outgoing mail contains FQDNs in the return-addresses (our mailer takes care of that). Incoming mail (to those sites) gets the uucp.jhu.edu stripped from addresses - that way they can still run stupid mail software and remain oblivious of domain names without everybody else suffering. Only one entry is required in the maps: jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu is the gateway for the uucp.jhu.edu domain. There is a wildcard MX in place as well so that *.uucp.jhu.edu goes to jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu. I like to think I've done my little part in simplifying matters... -Andy -- Andy Poling Internet: andy@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu UNIX Systems Programmer Bitnet: ANDY@JHUNIX Homewood Academic Computing Voice: (301)338-8096 Johns Hopkins University UUCP: uunet!mimsy!aplcen!jhunix!andy