🚀 go-pugleaf

From article <1992Jul27.135126.1626@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu>, by greenie@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu:

>to it.  But since it was a test and not expected to remain online forever,
>we did not bother registering the domain name - and we were under no obligation
                                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>to do so because it was through the commercial Internet and therefor not
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>under the auspices of the NIC and the NSF.


Three items.

 1.  What is the "Commercial Internet", and where is the "central
     contact point" for it, if such a thing exists.

 2.  Assuming you really _have_ no obligation to register a temporary
     domain name with "The NIC", how do you prevent collisions in the
     domain name-space?  It would seem that there has to be _some_
     central clearinghouse to prevent such collisions.

     A possibility comes to mind -- the NIC has delegated "domain
     registry authority" to the "Commercial Internet", who has full
     control over the "COM" domain.  "Is this the true state of
     things?", he asked curiously.  If this is not the case, I can see
     a situation where the "Commercial" Internet registers a particular
     domain [e.g, xyzzy.com], and someone else registers this same
     domain with the NIC.  Who wins when these are advertised by the
     nameservers?

 3.  Similar to the above, but with no easily apparent resolution, is
     the question of how one prevents IP address collisions.  Since the
     "NSF/MIL Internets" seem to be interconnected with the
     "Commercial" Internet, and they _are_, aren't they? :-), they must
     needs share that same address space.  It seems to me that there
     thus must be _a_ central clearinghouse for assigning IP addresses,
     in order to prevent collisions.  (The NIC comes to mind here as a
     reasonable site for such a clearinghouse.)  This leads me to
     believe that there _is_ an obligation to register domains.  (The
     only exception I can think of is if the registration authority
     'lends' one of its _own_ IP addresses to this new entity.)

Or am I missing something very obvious in what transpired here?

Confused and puzzled by the situation,
-- 
John G Dobnick                          ATTnet: (414) 229-5727
Computing Services Division             INTERNET: jgd@uwm.edu
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee     UUCP: uunet!uwm!jgd

"Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation,
and is thus a source of civilized delight."  -- William Safire