Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!utcsri!utegc!rayan From: rayan@utegc.UUCP Newsgroups: can.general Subject: Status of Canadian domain Message-ID: <8708190102.AA05431@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu> Date: Tue, 18-Aug-87 21:02:51 EDT Article-I.D.: ephemera.8708190102.AA05431 Posted: Tue Aug 18 21:02:51 1987 Date-Received: Thu, 20-Aug-87 01:16:59 EDT Distribution: can Organization: University of Toronto, AI group Lines: 96 Checksum: 17593 The top level domain name is CA. Barring a miracle, second level subdomains will be institutional names. I.e. domain names will end in ....CA Many people, me included, do not agree on these choices. I can understand using the 2-letter code for the country (attempting to avoid future problems), but the choice of second-level names is unacceptable. Nevertheless, I/we as a community have very little clout where it counts (money, politics, 3-piece suits, formal meetings, etc.) so that won't make much of a difference when CDNNET and NetNorth want .CA, and CDNNET administers the CA domain. At the moment, I think NetNorth is waiting for a reaction of some kind from its institutional member representatives, to a formal proposal before their Admin Committee to adopt .CA. A similar proposal is supposed to be ratified at an upcoming CDNNET board meeting (or equivalent). Incidentally, these two networks are very chummy, and have observers at each other's meetings etc. This is good, but it shows that we aren't "playing the game" as it were. I have the impression these proposals will be accepted by the respective boards around the middle or end of september or so (barring a public outcry...). I have made it clear to the network reps, that having organizations at the second level is not prudent (to put it mildly), and that as the UUCP rep (i.e. with strong support from the UUCP community) I find such a scheme unacceptable. They seem to be aware of the controversy of their decision, but apparently aren't disturbed enough to reconsider it. They also claim 3 networks for their stance (CDNNET, NetNorth, DRENET), whereas DRENET has basically kept out of the frey, and is an observer. At the summer Usenix, a bunch of people - at a BOF discussing this matter - made the suggestion that the networks should put together a position paper describing the pros/cons of the various alternatives in objective terms (mutually refereed), and use it to start a discussion on the various forums. The reaction when I suggested this to the other reps, was that there was no point in wasting time starting from scratch (which wasn't the idea). In the meantime, most of the summer has gone by with very little action, mostly due to project pressures at CDNNET and holidays I imagine. I think a good public discussion could have started at the time. At the moment, there is a CA domain registered with the SRI NIC, there are two sort-of-registered subdomains in it: UBC.CA and MCGILL.CA. The McGill one was forced by them needing a domain for an Internet linkup. I suspect the UBC one is there because that's where CDNNET is strong. Registration procedures have not be decided yet. I'll let you all know when something concrete is in place. If you have opinions on this matter, please vent them to can.general. Part of the reason given for discounting the UUCP community's stance, was that there was no followup comments or discussion of a previous status report I posted to the net (not in can.general). That status report indicated things were going according to our wishes, so naturally there wasn't much comment (only a couple of positive notes). If you disagree with this .CA business, if your site is on NetNorth or CDNNET, you can also help by going to the NetNorth and/or CDNNET rep at your site and express your concerns, and asking them to forward them. If you're not on those nets, feel free to post your thoughts here. I am not sure what they want to do about sites that aren't organizations or institutions. There were some mumblings about geographical subdomains, perhaps. Incidentally, I took a poll of site admins a few months back on this matter. These are the numerical results: In favour of: toplevel domain: --------------------------------------------------------------------- CA: 12 CAN: 46 type of 2nd-level domains: --------------------------------------------------------------------- institutional: 6 functional: 35 geographical: 1 functional + institutionala 2 geographical + institutional: 3 functional + geographical + institutional: 4 anything-but-institutional: 1 That's a 4:1 ratio in favour of CAN, and a 6:1 ratio for functional 2LDs. The first issue is largely emotional, the second very objective. I got many cogent thoughtful replies, thanks all. I tried as a last-ditch effort to stir up some discussion with the other network reps as a result of this info. Unfortunately, to no avail. I think they thought they had already decided. rayan (rayan@utai.uucp, rayan@ai.toronto.edu) -- Rayan Zachariassen AI group, University of Toronto