[175342] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Why is .gov only for US government agencies?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (manning bill)
Mon Oct 20 18:10:27 2014
X-Original-To: nanog@nanog.org
From: manning bill <bmanning@isi.edu>
In-Reply-To: <C50A00AE-906A-4135-8190-682A98BB2E7F@tislabs.com>
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 15:09:42 -0700
To: Sandra Murphy <sandy@tislabs.com>
X-MailScanner-From: bmanning@isi.edu
Cc: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
FNC =93reserved=94 .gov and .mil for the US.
And Postel was right=85 there was/is near zero reason to technically =
extend/expand the number of TLDs.
/bill
PO Box 12317
Marina del Rey, CA 90295
310.322.8102
On 20October2014Monday, at 12:19, Sandra Murphy <sandy@tislabs.com> =
wrote:
> By the time of RFC1591, March 1994, authored by Jon Postel, said:
>=20
> GOV - This domain was originally intended for any kind of government
> office or agency. More recently a decision was taken to
> register only agencies of the US Federal government in this
> domain.
>=20
> No reference as to who, when, or how.
>=20
> That same RFC says:
>=20
> In the Domain Name System (DNS) naming of computers there is a
> hierarchy of names. The root of system is unnamed. There are a set
> of what are called "top-level domain names" (TLDs). These are the
> generic TLDs (EDU, COM, NET, ORG, GOV, MIL, and INT), and the two
> letter country codes from ISO-3166. It is extremely unlikely that
> any other TLDs will be created.
>=20
> Gotta love that last sentence, yes?
>=20
> --Sandy
>=20
> On Oct 20, 2014, at 12:50 PM, Fred Baker (fred) <fred@cisco.com> =
wrote:
>=20
>>=20
>> On Oct 19, 2014, at 5:05 AM, Matthew Petach <mpetach@netflight.com> =
wrote:
>>=20
>>> Wondering if some of the long-time list members
>>> can shed some light on the question--why is the
>>> .gov top level domain only for use by US
>>> government agencies? Where do other world
>>> powers put their government agency domains?
>>>=20
>>> With the exception of the cctlds, shouldn't the
>>> top-level gtlds be generically open to anyone
>>> regardless of borders?
>>>=20
>>> Would love to get any info about the history
>>> of the decision to make it US-only.
>>>=20
>>> Thanks!
>>>=20
>>> Matt
>>=20
>> The short version is that that names were a process. In the =
beginning, hosts simply had names. When DNS came into being, names were =
transformed from =93some-name=94 to =93some-name.ARPA=94. A few of what =
we now all gTLDs then came into being - .com, .net, .int, .mil, .gov, =
.edu - and the older .arpa names quickly fell into disuse.=20
>>=20
>> ccTLDs came later.
>>=20
>> I=92ve been told that the reason God was able to create the earth in =
seven days was that He had no installed base. We do. The funny thing is =
that you=92ll see a reflection of the gTLDs underneath the ccTLDs of a =
number of countries - .ac, .ed, and the like.
>=20
