North American Network Operators Group

Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

Re: US Domain -- County Delegations

  • From: Paul A Vixie
  • Date: Wed Aug 02 10:41:49 1995

> no geographic barriers, such as mine, it doesn't make much sense to 
> include geography in the name regardless of where the corporation is 
> registered.

the goal of the domain name is not to be an intuitive locator of your
internet objects.  that's the job of a directory service (like whois
or whois++ or x.500.)  your domain names are meant to uniquely identify
you in a semi-permanent way -- as long as they are unique and are more
permanent than your IP address, they are doing their job.

within that context, anything that deepens the tree will give us more
opportunities for uniqueness.  if someone else who wants to do business
on the internet has named their company "xmission" (let's say they are
in the auto parts business, specializing in transmissions, but they do
a lot of mail order business and thus like you, have no obvious geographic
limitations), they should be able to register a domain name that looks
a little like yours (has "xmission." near the front of it.)  if we deepen
the tree by inserting industry codes or geography names, you can both have
"xmission." in your name.  onlookers will have trouble telling the differ-
ence, and may find the wrong "xmission." but at least they will have the
opportunity to find both.