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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!seismo!munnari!otc!metro!basser!john
From: john@basser.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: UUCP Zone application information packet
Message-ID: <876@basser.oz>
Date: Fri, 20-Feb-87 12:39:41 EST
Article-I.D.: basser.876
Posted: Fri Feb 20 12:39:41 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Feb-87 20:45:49 EST
References: <3368@cbosgd.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: john@basser.oz (John Mackin)
Organization: Dept of Comp Sci, Uni of Sydney, Australia
Lines: 25
Summary: OZ.AU is not (exclusively) academic

In article <3368@cbosgd.ATT.COM> mark@cbosgd.ATT.COM (Mark Horton) writes:

> Not all countries use the second level for the organization.  In
> particular, Australia and Britain have set up second level domains
> AC.UK and OZ.AU for their academic communities, and put the
> organization at the third level.

I appreciate that Mark is probably deliberately oversimplifying here, in an
attempt to speak to the layperson without becoming confusing.  However,
what he says is certainly not correct.  No analogy can be drawn between
ac.uk and oz.au.  oz.au is one of the older-style names Mark mentions
earlier in the article: the oz domain indicates a particular _network_,
specifically ACSnet.  In no sense is the oz domain comprised of only
academic sites.  There are many commercial and government sites on
ACSnet; all these are in the oz domain.  There are a few ACSnet sites
that are not in Australia; these are not in the oz domain.  However,
not only is addressing these sites from outside Australia problematic,
there is in every case a better way for anyone not in Australia to reach
these machines rather than via ACSnet, so the point is moot.

John Mackin, Basser Department of Computer Science,
	     University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

john@basser.oz.AU (john%basser.oz@SEISMO.CSS.GOV)
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