Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!crdgw1!uunet!mcsun!ukc!mucs!cns!umaida!jf
From: jf@ap.co.umist.ac.uk (John Forrest)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Re: When to reverse domain addresses?
Message-ID: <1990Nov19.135505@ap.co.umist.ac.uk>
Date: 19 Nov 90 13:55:04 GMT
References: <1990Nov16.155757@ap.co.umist.ac.uk> <23165@ucsd.Edu>
Sender: usenet@cns.umist.ac.uk (News System)
Reply-To: jf@ap.co.umist.ac.uk (John Forrest)
Organization: UMIST Computation, Manchester, UK.
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In article <23165@ucsd.Edu>, brian@ucsd.Edu (Brian Kantor) writes:
|> I have this neurotic compulsion to keep beating on a dead horse:
|> 
|> If the people running the UK e-mail and news gateways were to obtain
|> the top-level internet domain
|> 	.GB
|> and simply encapsulate their internal hostnames such as
|> 	uk.ac.ucl.cs
|> within that domain when the mail crossed the gateway, they'd not only
|> solve the ordering problem, but also bring their domain in conformance
|> with the ISO country codes.
|> 
|> Thus
|> 	jon@uk.ac.ucl.cs
|> inside the UK would cross the mail gateway and appear everywhere else in
|> the world as
|> 	jon@uk.ac.ucl.cs.gb
|> and when it was replied to, the mail would simply to those mail gateways
|> MX'd for *.gb, and they'd strip off the .gb, and there you have it.
|> 
|> Is this doomed to failure because it's too simple and easy?
|> 
|> 	Brian Kantor
|> 		UCSD Network Operations
|> 		brian@ucsd.edu	BRIAN@UCSD ucsd!brian

I'll actually post up on this, although I was tempted to just ignore the silly
comment. As far as everyone here is concerned UK is our top domain, I don't know
where the ISO GB comes in - just safe to say that no-one uses it. It is worth
noting that Great Britain is not the same as the United Kingdom - although I
don't really want to get into a great argument on the politics of this (mainly
Irish related), we DO use the term United Kingdon here at lot, just as United
States of America is abbreviated to United States and US. Thus UK is a more
appropriate term that GB, and since it is already used, we should continue to do
so.

As for the comment about putting .gb on the end of grey-book, this breaks both
domain conventions and doesn't solve the problem! Basically, our mailers have
evolved to a situation where they try to be soft on which order the address is
given. This has worked up to now, but it is ceasing to work unambiguously. We, in
the UK, thus need to solve our little problem. There are many, I for one, who
seem to prefer abandoning the reverse notation, but while there are mailers who
send out the stuff, we will be stuck with this problem. It isn't a problem of the
rest of the world taking to us, so much as problems around the UK.

Talking of country codes, why isn't it brian@ucsd.edu.US ?

John Forrest
Dept of Computation
UMIST.