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From: rayan@utegc.UUCP
Newsgroups: can.general
Subject: Re: Canadian UUCP Zone (was Re: Status of Canadian domain)
Message-ID: <8708240437.AA05616@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu>
Date: Mon, 24-Aug-87 00:37:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: ephemera.8708240437.AA05616
Posted: Mon Aug 24 00:37:10 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 24-Aug-87 01:36:07 EDT
References: <8708190102.AA05431@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu> <298@ncrcan.UUCP> <1251@van-bc.UUCP> <53@ncc.UUCP>
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Organization: University of Toronto, AI group
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In article <1262@van-bc.UUCP> sl@van-bc.UUCP (Stuart Lynne) writes:
# Other than that the UUCP Zone should be able to make it's own decisions on
# the structure of it's part of the .ca namespace (as long as it does not
# choose 2nd level names which collide with names already allocated in other
# Canadian zones).

There are at least two big problems with this:

1. Consistency. In an anarchy of that kind, there will be no guidelines
   whatsoever for guessing an address.

2. There are a small but very important set of organizations that live
   on more than one network. These are mostly the universities and R&D
   organizations. If they are in N Zones, each with a different policy,
   there'll be chaos.

Also, there may be a misunderstanding of what a "Zone" is in the context
of "The UUCP Zone". This is separate from the technical concept of a Zone
(which delimits the boundaries of delegated authority of a domain master).
The UUCP Zone doesn't set policy; it is an interface to the NIC so that
they avoid getting swamped by zillions of unacceptable/not-up-to-par
applications, and so the applicants have a mechanism to do the grunge work
of checking and distributing the various data.

While I'm here...

Of the three ways of dividing up .CA, there is no fundamental incompatibility
between 'geographical' and 'functional' or 'geographical' and 'organizational'.
However, 'functional' and 'organizational' cannot coexist, partially because
they overlap to a certain extent. Since geographical domains are so wonderfully
compatible with the alternatives, such domains will probably spring up at
some point (after all, there are many many organizations which stay put;
a condominium for example -- the one I'm in uses a computer for various
things - I wonder when they'll get on the net...).

Anyway, the lines between functional and organizational domains are a bit
fuzzy due to the existence of meta-organizations, or associations/consortia
if you prefer. For example, a consulting engineering firm is an organizaton
of sorts (a company), but such firms have associations that look after
accreditation, lobbying, etc. So, if both the company and its overseeing
body are "on the net", in an organizational scheme they would both be
accomodated at the same subdomain level. In a functional scheme, the
trade organization would be 'higher' in the hierarchy simply as a way of
grouping the related companies associated with it. But even if the trade
organization gets a functionally motivated domain name, it is still an
organization. The same thing is likely to happen in many other situations.

When the engineering firm comes and wants a domain registered, the difference
between the approaches is then:

organizational: "You want to register? Certainly; just choose a name that
doesn't conflict with any present or likely future important domains
(such as city, province, major institution, etc.)."

functional: "You want to register? Certainly; how many are there of your
kind right now? If none, why don't you set up a new 2nd-level domain for
your type of entity, and run it until a few more join in. If there are others
like you, get a common entity to register a new 2nd-level domain and then
talk to them. Oh, the 2nd-level domain should bear some relation to what
you do, and shouldn't conflict with existing ones"

As a piece of mail that flew by me once, stated:

   For example, suggest how one would name:
     waterloo, the university
     waterloo, the city government
     waterloo, the location
     waterloo, the regional government
      (the city of waterloo is one of the cities in this region)

Someone mentioned that there was a waterloo in quebec too...
Note that here geographical and organizational would clash if one wasn't
careful as to choice of names.

At the moment, it looks like that under the organization.CA scheme,
uwaterloo.ca or something similar will be required to distinguish the
university from these other things. Probably city-waterloo.ca etc.
will follow. Isn't that a functional division under a different name
(and worse implementation)? Just waterloo.ca is too ambiguous.

It has also been suggested that there be parallel geographical
and functional hierarchies, for example:

	user@dept.london.college.ca
	user@dept.lc.london.on.ca

Some ideas for pondering...

rayan
-- 
Rayan Zachariassen
AI group, University of Toronto