[11975] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
The new Internet naming system!(?)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Mon Feb 2 20:38:19 1998
Date: Mon, 02 Feb 1998 16:49:20 -0600
From: Jack Kessler <kessler@well.com>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
The new Internet naming system!(?)
This morning the US government -- U.S. Department of Commerce, NTIA/OIA
-- released its plan for getting out of the Internet name - game, at,
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/dnsdrft.htm
Anyone interested in finally getting reliable Internet statistics ought
to read this.
I've never been able to figure out how many people are using the
Internet, or who they are, or where on the planet they are, and this
problem has been growing a _lot_ worse recently. This in spite of Mark
Lottor's and John Quarterman's valiant efforts, which are the only
reliable ones which I've ever found myself. We know how many "hosts", but
we still don't know how many "users" -- how many people or who they are
-- how many people in France, for example, or in India, and whether those
folks are government or commercial or some other kind of user.
It helps to know what you are talking about when you throw around Internet
superlatives -- "millions of hosts", "10s of millions of users", "number
of hits", dollar amounts, etc. -- all of have thrown the numbers around,
none of us can know. It hasn't done us much good recently to know that 20
or 30 or 50 or more million possibilities can be classified into only a
few simplistic categories like ".gov" and ".com", and adding a few more of
same won't really help. All of Australia is in ".au", although at least
with the ".com" in front of it: in France it's just ".fr" -- the national
library and the prime minister and any little podunk scandalsheet.
Wherever the US govt parks the DNS, eventually -- currently with Network
Solutions, Inc., "under a five-year cooperative agreement with NSF [which]
includes an optional ramp-down period that expires on September 30, 1998"
-- it is in the interest of every librarian, Internet developer,
information scientist, digital information worker, Internet user and Web -
nut to see that more useful _metadata_ about the world's largest data
warehouse result. We need better information. Write to somebody --
somebody like <A HREF="mailto:dns@ntia.doc.gov">dns@ntia.doc.gov</A> --
but others too.
Jack Kessler
kessler@well.sf.ca.us
