Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!tikal!nwnexus!edm
From: edm@nwnexus.WA.COM (Ed Morin)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: How to sign-up a host in the .US Domain.
Message-ID: <410190450@nwnexus.WA.COM>
Date: 19 Jul 88 23:31:26 GMT
References: <8807141838.0.UUL1.3#948@Fernwood.MPK.CA.US> <3441@palo-alto.DEC.COM> <1096@maynard.BSW.COM> <1477@spdcc.COM>
Reply-To: edm@nwnexus.WA.COM (Ed Morin)
Organization: Northwest Nexus Inc., Seattle, WA
Lines: 23

In article <1477@spdcc.COM> dyer@spdcc.COM (Steve Dyer) writes:
>Nevertheless, the requirement (if it truly is so) that 2nd-level
>domains must be states and 3rd-level domains must be cities is truly
>bizarre.  Does anyone have the whole story, including the rationale
>for why this was done?

My understanding is that this naming convention eliminates naming
collisions.  The idea is to use the "standard" three-letter city
abreviations (i.e. SEA for Seattle).  (As an aside, this also applies
to little towns; but how many people know the three letter code
for Monroe, WA?)

I seriously considered registering our public access Un*x system in
the .US domain, but given the naming convention and the fact that
*none* of our users wanted that sort of address inflicted on them we
opted for the .COM domain.  (Admittedly this is not 100% applicable,
but *most* of our users are businesses.)  I would be happy to use
the .US domain instead of the .COM domain if I could administer it
at the second level (.WA.US) like I do for .WA.COM, but I (and my
users) refuse to have this city name requirement imposed on us.

Ed Morin
Northwest Nexus Inc.
edm@nwnexus.wa.com