[12523] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: About the creation of new 3-letter domain(s)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Skip Montanaro)
Fri May 20 06:46:21 1994
Date: Thu, 19 May 94 22:29:46 EDT
From: montnaro@ausable.crd.ge.com (Skip Montanaro)
To: "Mark R. Ludwig" <Mark-Ludwig@uai.com>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <9405191759.AA07407@hp.uai.com>
Reply-To: montanaro@ausable.crd.ge.com (Skip Montanaro)
Mark R. Ludwig writes:
I like:
Mark-Ludwig@Universal-Analytics.3625.Del-Amo.Boulevard.Torrance.CA.US
because as much as I like to think
Mark-Ludwig@UAI.COM
is easier to remember, etc., it doesn't matter! Unless you only
correspond with a very small number of people, you'll have mail
aliases set up anyway. Besides that, is it "Mark-Ludwig,"
"Mark_Ludwig," or "Mark.Ludwig"?
I can attest to that. At GE CRD, there was a period about five or six years
ago where they went through several different mailname generation schemes
over a period of about a year to try and find mailnames for everyone that
wouldn't clash. Lots of schemes were tried (last names, last name +
initials, initials + last name, primary computer user id, ...). None worked
especially well, so you generally still wind up having to execute a "tele"
command to check on the mailname of anybody you don't frequently send mail
to.
My mailname was always my last name ("montanaro"). Correspondents could
never figure why they got mail from "montnaro" (no "a" in the middle because
of the 8-char Unix user id I chose), but were asked to respond to
"montanaro". I frequently got mail for Cosimo Montanaro (mailname
"montanc"). Even in a small organization (~ 1500 mailnames), problems arise.
The same will happen no matter how you modify the domain structure. Several
examples of some difficult-to-remember foreign domain names circulated a
couple days ago. As far as I'm concerned, all the schemes cooked up so far
have one serious flaw or another. If they get any harder to remember or type
than IP addresses, then you might just as well use IP addresses. (Somebody
else already recommended this. I take no credit for the idea.)
This thread was started by someone suggesting a PVT domain be created. Jon
Postel responded that PVT would be as hard to administer as the COM domain
is now and referred folks to RFC 1480 for alternatives. RFC 1480 talks about
the US domain and is heavily into naming relatively stable organizations
like libraries and schools, but rather thin on naing more mobile
individuals. A whole spate of (flawed) counterproposals followed. Might I
suggest instead that perhaps 10-100 new top-level domains be created, each
with 2-4 meaningful letters (e.g. PVT means something to me - I can remember
it pretty easily - but XOQ doesn't) and that effort be expended to make it
easier to administer relatively flat domains so they can be rather more full
before they become burdensome to administer. After all, I think most people
would prefer shorter domain names rather than longer. I much prefer
montanaro@crd.ge.com or skip@automatrix.com to
george_montanaro@xyz.1212.555.518.scotia.ny.us. Besides, that domain address
conflicts with my four year-old's... :-)
--
Skip Montanaro (montanaro@ausable.crd.ge.com)
Now working for Automatrix. Details at 11.
