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Path: utzoo!utgpu!utcsri!utegc!lamy
From: lamy@utegc.UUCP
Newsgroups: can.general
Subject: Re: TCNET and domains
Message-ID: <8708190028.AA05258@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu>
Date: Tue, 18-Aug-87 20:28:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: ephemera.8708190028.AA05258
Posted: Tue Aug 18 20:28:41 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 20-Aug-87 01:15:21 EDT
Distribution: can
Organization: University of Toronto, AI group
Lines: 43
Checksum: 13022


mcgill.ca is on the ARPANET and is currently designated as a name server
for .ca (I don't know who the backup is at present).  There is also a MX
entry for ubc.ca that points to UBC on CSNet.

There are also sites on NetNorth (the canadian segment of the Bitnet family)
that claim to be in .ca (e.g. unb.ca), but until some machine on the internet
agrees to forward mail to them they cannot really use that name since it would
make any mail to the Internet unrepliable.  The details of coordination of
registries do not seem to have been ironed out yet.

It seems that the X.400-ish idea of having organisations as second level
domains seems to have prevailed.  Meanwhile, the maintainer of the Domains
database on Bitnet keeps bouncing requests from organisations, asking them
instead to reconsider using "logical" second level domains like "ac" for
academic institutions.  Oh well.  I can imagine the mess the .ca domain
is going to be in 10 years.

At present it is not clear to me who has authority over the .ca domain.
I guess whoever runs the name server has de facto control, since accessibility
from the Internet is quite vital...

(Quickie sketch: a UUCP-only site could be in .ca if two conditions are met:

a) a machine on the Internet will respond to requests from machines on the
   Internet of the form "who is foo.ca" with the names of machines
   on the Internet that will accept mail addressed to foo.ca (ouf!)..
   
   The machine that answers to requests is the name server.  The machine
   that relays the messages is the mail exchanger, which explains why the
   pointers in the name server are called MX records.  The name server and
   the exchanger will often be different machines.

b) the machine designated by the MX record must be able to send mail
   on its way to foo.ca, no matter how.
)

This is the current situation as I understand it.  No doubt someone will jump
if something is wrong...

Jean-Francois Lamy                      lamy@ai.toronto.edu (CSnet,UUCP,Bitnet)
AI Group, Dept of Computer Science      lamy@ai.toronto.cdn (EAN X.400)
University of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4   {seismo,watmath}!ai.toronto.edu!lamy