Subject: Domain name organization recommendation

From: Andre-John Mas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 11:10:58 -0400

Hi,

 I was wondering if anybody has written a documentation that examines
 the usability of national domain names and provides advice on what 
 approaches are actually useable. For example, I recently had a
discussion
 with some people on the .us domain on how unusable it is due to the
length
 of the domain names - myco.mytown.mystate.us. How about having .com.us,
 .edu.us, and accepting that anything without a country extension is
should
 now be reserved for international use, contrary to what the original
RFC
 said on the use of the .com, .edu, .gov domain names.

 Andre

---

From: Masataka Ohta <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 00:42:30 +0859 ()

Andre;

>  approaches are actually useable.

It highly depends on locale that generic document is harmful.

> For example, I recently had a
> discussion

Try to use <zip-code>.us.

>  said on the use of the .com, .edu, .gov domain names.

Huh?

.com etc. have been international, from the beginning.

Who, do you think, can say a US or JP corporate which want to
attract customers worldwide is NOT international?

If you think domain names under TLDs scarese, you should better try
to charge annurally $15000 for domain names directly under TLDs and
for ones indirectly under ccTLDs $15.

							Masataka Ohta

---

From: Andre-John Mas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 11:56:46 -0400

> .com etc. have been international, from the beginning.

If you read the following RFC: http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1591.txt
you will
see there are limitations to which the USA has privilege. Has this
document
been revised?

Andre

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 14:14:13 -0400

--On Monday, 24 July, 2000 11:56 -0400 Andre-John Mas
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> If you read the following RFC:
> http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1591.txt you will
> see there are limitations to which the USA has privilege. Has
> this document
> been revised?

No, although ICANN has been working on sections of it.  See
their web site (http://www.icann.org/) for more information on
this and other DNS policy and administrative issues (in which
the IETF is _not_, as an organization, involved).   

Incidentally, the relevant defining (policy) document for the US
domain is RFC 1480.  More information can be obtained at
http://www.nic.us/, which also contains current-practice updates
to RFC 1480.  

The various domain surveys routinely show the US domain as among
the largest half-dozen country code domains --I think recently
about third-- and it tends to run a much closer ratio of
registered names to actual, distinct, hosts than those domains
which have become overwhelmed registrations of many product or
company names which point to a much smaller number of web
servers).

That information is obviously at some variance with the amount
of misinformation posted on this subject to the IETF list in the
last 24 hours.

But, more generally:

* If someone has issues or suggestions about general
domainnaming policy, take them to ICANN.   They are not
engineering issues, and the IETF isn't involved.

* If someone has issues with how the US Domain is managed,
administered, or delegated internally, I'd recommend discussing
them with the US Domain Administrator, after reviewing the
material on the web page cited above.   Again, the IETF isn't
involved and this mailing list isn't an especially useful
discussion forum.

     john