🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug3.133259.9804@waikato.ac.nz>, john@waikato.ac.nz (John Houlker) writes:
|> We have had a request to add a new `top level' NZ domain within the
|> DNS, namely

|> 	IAC.NZ

|> meaning the New Zealand International Antarctic Centre - this is
|> for various organisations based at the IAC in Christchurch that
|> participate in Antarctic programs.  
   [...]

|> This follows the approach we have had so far in that entries within
|> NZ (with the exception of ARCHIE.NZ) represent groupings of
|> particular common types (here we have the "Antarctic Research
|> Organisation" type, which might be compared with CRI.NZ).

Bad example.  I, and most people I've talked to on the subject think the
cri.nz domain is a bad piece of naming.  I actually think this IAC proposal
has a lot more validity than cri.nz ever did.


|> Does anyone have any strong opinions about the creation of such a
|> domain?  Should we create - as discussed earlier - something like a
|> domain for research organisations (more general than CRI.NZ) and
|> use this to locate the IAC?   The research domain names suggested
|> before included such as RI.NZ, RES.NZ, so we would get something like:

What is wrong with org.nz?

There is already:
	nzdri.org.nz
	branz.org.nz

Why couldn't the cri's and other research orgs go under here with more
meaningful names than "grace" or "marc".

cheers
mark

In article <1992Aug3.133259.9804@waikato.ac.nz>, john@waikato.ac.nz (John Houlker) writes:
|> We have had a request to add a new `top level' NZ domain within the
|> DNS, namely
|> 
|> 	IAC.NZ
|> 
|> meaning the New Zealand International Antarctic Centre - this is
|> for various organisations based at the IAC in Christchurch that
|> participate in Antarctic programs.  These evidently include
|> operations from a number of different countries, so they have
|> proposed a naming scheme of the form
|> 
|> 	host.org.IAC.NZ
|> 
|> They are keen that the New Zealand flavour is in the name, but
|> also that the different national program components are represented.
|> 
|> This follows the approach we have had so far in that entries within
|> NZ (with the exception of ARCHIE.NZ) represent groupings of
|> particular common types (here we have the "Antarctic Research
|> Organisation" type, which might be compared with CRI.NZ).  It is a
|> little unsual, however, since it also corresponds to a single site
|> (all-be-it a multi-organisation site).
|> 
|> Does anyone have any strong opinions about the creation of such a
|> domain?  Should we create - as discussed earlier - something like a
|> domain for research organisations (more general than CRI.NZ) and
|> use this to locate the IAC?   The research domain names suggested
|> before included such as RI.NZ, RES.NZ, so we would get something like:
|> 
|> 	IAC.RES.NZ

Well I never saw discussion on this! Where was it discussed?

It would have been nice to see a discussion like this before we had CRI.NZ
foisted on us. I think we've already got a perfectly good set of domains to
cover both cases. The CRI's are commercial organisations and are defined as such
- they should have gone in CO.NZ. What happens in future if they get sold off?
If that was a bit too much for them then the alternative was ORG.NZ which is
where the International Antarctic Centre should go. I appreciate that the CRI
battle is lost - there was enough aggro when then changed their name over from
DSIR.GOVT.NZ.

If we go down this track you can throw away the secondary level domains, such as
AC.NZ, CO.NZ etc., as you will get requests from organisations that feel they
don't quite fit in. e.g.

	At VUW we undertake research, have commercial interests and we teach.
	We're special and we should be:

	VUW.NZ

I'm not sure I really have a problem with us going down that route as long as we
accept that we're only going to have a largish flat name space inside NZ but
lets do it as a result of a conscious decision and not just drift into it.

I had a series of conversations with a guy from Shell Oil a few months ago who
wanted the name SHELL.NZ set aside. I suggested we had a policy that meant he
should be SHELL.CO.NZ and he didn't like that too much. I suspect that if we
go down the IAC.NZ track that we'll find this sort of thing harder. I know I
won't argue with him about it - I'll just forward a request for SHELL.NZ!

I would urge you all to think about this hard at this point about this. We might
get away with this one but one more exception could well spell the end of any
structure we currently have. I urge the use of:

	IAC.ORG.NZ

In article <BsDxqq.Ery@comp.vuw.ac.nz>, mark@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Mark Davies)
 writes:

> |> This follows the approach we have had so far in that entries within
> |> NZ (with the exception of ARCHIE.NZ) represent groupings of
> |> particular common types (here we have the "Antarctic Research
> |> Organisation" type, which might be compared with CRI.NZ).
~
> Bad example.  I, and most people I've talked to on the subject think the
> cri.nz domain is a bad piece of naming.  I actually think this IAC proposal
> has a lot more validity than cri.nz ever did.

[and other interesting bits]

In article <BsDyIE.Fz0@comp.vuw.ac.nz>, andy.linton@comp.vuw.ac.nz
 (Andy Linton) writes:

> |>          Should we create - as discussed earlier - something like a
> |> domain for research organisations (more general than CRI.NZ) and
> |> use this to locate the IAC?   The research domain names suggested
> |> before included such as RI.NZ, RES.NZ, so we would get something like:
> |> 
> |> 	IAC.RES.NZ
> 
> Well I never saw discussion on this! Where was it discussed?
> 
> It would have been nice to see a discussion like this before we had CRI.NZ
> foisted on us.

From memory it was discussed in nz.netstatus - was it a mail only
exchange instead?  Certainly I recall comments from Michael Newbery
at VUW for example.  The idea of a RI.NZ or similar was put forward
as a suitable location for the CRIs; in the end the CRI computer
network people expressed a strong preference for CRI.NZ.

> I think we've already got a perfectly good set of domains to
> cover both cases. The CRI's are commercial organisations and are defined as such
> - they should have gone in CO.NZ.
~
~
> If we go down this track you can throw away the secondary level domains, such as
> AC.NZ, CO.NZ etc., as you will get requests from organisations that feel they
> don't quite fit in. e.g.
> 
> 	At VUW we undertake research, have commercial interests and we teach.
> 	We're special and we should be:
> 
> 	VUW.NZ
> 

Note that the IAC is not a single organisation, but a number of
organisations of a common type (at least this is what I'm told).
Personally I much prefer the idea of a grouping into types at the
NZ level, rather than having a flat space, but there may be
differing views on whether we must have some minimal set of
types, or what a `type' can be.

> I had a series of conversations with a guy from Shell Oil a few months ago who
> wanted the name SHELL.NZ set aside. I suggested we had a policy that meant he
> should be SHELL.CO.NZ and he didn't like that too much. I suspect that if we
> go down the IAC.NZ track that we'll find this sort of thing harder. I know I
> won't argue with him about it - I'll just forward a request for SHELL.NZ!

If we are going to stick to domain types rather than move to a flat
space, then asking for SHELL.NZ would mean arguing this is a
multiorganisation domain (as has been argued for the IAC) - I can
imagine this could be based geographically perhaps, so we then have
to ask what the term "organisation" means in this context.

> I would urge you all to think about this hard at this point about this. We might
> get away with this one but one more exception could well spell the end of any
> structure we currently have. I urge the use of:
> 
> 	IAC.ORG.NZ

As stated above, IAC.NZ is not an exception if considered a domain
for a group of organisations, and we allow that the creation of new
domains for organisation types is permitted.  Of course I agree we
do need to think about how NZ should be used, and for example, a
case for restricting NZ domains to some minimal set could be that
defining an organisation is difficult, and for this and perhaps
other reasons defining new domains of organisation types will lead
us inevitably to the extreme case of a flat space.  On the other
hand it could be said that limiting the domains to what we have now
is arbitrary and will somehow miss some important structure we
should have, or at least is much desired and does no serious harm.

Thanks
John

andy.linton@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Andy Linton) writes:
>structure we currently have. I urge the use of:
>
>	IAC.ORG.NZ

What's the difference between .gen.nz & .org.nz? I thought the equivalent
of the US .org in NZ was .gen.nz. If this is not the case, then .gen.nz
should have been called something more descriptive, like .bbs.nz.


--
Tim Hammett, Botany Dept, Auckland University, New Zealand.
t.hammett@aukuni.ac.nz   Phone: +64-9-373-7599 x8365    FAX: +64-9-373-7416

In article <hammett.712875626@sbsu1.aukuni.ac.nz>, hammett@sbsu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Tim Hammett) writes:
|> What's the difference between .gen.nz & .org.nz? I thought the equivalent
|> of the US .org in NZ was .gen.nz. If this is not the case, then .gen.nz
|> should have been called something more descriptive, like .bbs.nz.

Actually, I would say that that "loose" mapping was:

		NZ		US
	     .org.nz	->	.org
	     .gen.nz	->	.us

cheers
mark

In article <BsFHvA.Fvv@comp.vuw.ac.nz>, mark@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Mark Davies)
 writes:
> 
> In article <hammett.712875626@sbsu1.aukuni.ac.nz>, hammett@sbsu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Tim Hammett) writes:
> |> What's the difference between .gen.nz & .org.nz? I thought the equivalent
> |> of the US .org in NZ was .gen.nz. If this is not the case, then .gen.nz
> |> should have been called something more descriptive, like .bbs.nz.
> 
> Actually, I would say that that "loose" mapping was:
> 
> 		NZ		US
> 	     .org.nz	->	.org
> 	     .gen.nz	->	.us

That's my understanding of it too, though I'm not sure the
meaning of .us is entirely certain - the main intention was
that gen.nz is for names that are not for institutions
but rather `private' use (or for operations that support
individual access).

So at present we have:

  ac.nz.	"academic community" (schools, tertiary education institutions)
  cri.nz.	Crown Research Institues
  co.nz.	Commercial organisations
  govt.nz.	Government institutions
  mil.nz.	Military institutions
  net.nz.	Network organisations or services
  org.nz.	Organisations that are none of, or some mixture of the above
  gen.nz.	Private users or providers for private users
  archie.nz	the archie service 

These is a resemblance to the top level domains of course, though
we did try to avoid two letter names (as they can under
abbreviation completion rules collide with national top levels) and
similarly the top level three letter names (these aren't supposed
to be exclusively US domains, but that's another story).  As you
can see we didn't avoid AC (because we had used it in the "Coloured
Book" address space perhaps), CO, MIL, NET or ORG - we didn't
really avoid much.

Clearly it is sensible to have an expectation of at least two
names within a level of the DNS, but there is also a view that
there shouldn't be a `large' number at the NZ level (other
countries may have a different approach, but a number have
something of a structure within their national domain - in
any case we can make up our own minds on how we'd like NZ
set out).

A question we have then, is whether the domains we have in NZ now
are already as many as we should have (perhaps saying we should
have a similar number to the three letter top levels, or some other
argument about quantity), and/or are somehow special or orthogonal
and there can be no others, or whether we allow new domains in NZ
to be created under some policy (the extreme case being essentially
no policy, i.e. anything goes, first-in-first-served).  An
advantage of fixing the domains to those we have now is that we
don't have the problem or working out a policy (given we're not
keen on the trivial policy option), a disadvantage is that in some
sense we have `customers' to please as best we can, and we may turn
these away with dogmatism (for example the IAC might not like
org.nz and I know they are considering the INT top level).

Thanks for you comments, keep them coming
John

In article <1992Aug3.172657.9826@waikato.ac.nz>, john@waikato.ac.nz (John Houlker) writes:
|> In article <BsDyIE.Fz0@comp.vuw.ac.nz>, andy.linton@comp.vuw.ac.nz
|>  (Andy Linton) writes:

some stuff deleted here 

|> > I would urge you all to think about this hard at this point about this. We might
|> > get away with this one but one more exception could well spell the end of any
|> > structure we currently have. I urge the use of:
|> > 
|> > 	IAC.ORG.NZ
|> 
|> As stated above, IAC.NZ is not an exception if considered a domain
|> for a group of organisations, and we allow that the creation of new
|> domains for organisation types is permitted. Of course I agree we
|> do need to think about how NZ should be used, and for example, a
|> case for restricting NZ domains to some minimal set could be that
|> defining an organisation is difficult, and for this and perhaps
|> other reasons defining new domains of organisation types will lead
|> us inevitably to the extreme case of a flat space.  On the other
|> hand it could be said that limiting the domains to what we have now
|> is arbitrary and will somehow miss some important structure we
|> should have, or at least is much desired and does no serious harm.


Let's run this up the flagpole then. If IAC is to be "considered a domain
for a group of organisations" whose function is Antarctic Research then let's
not talk about the New Zealand International Antarctic Centre - it's either
an NZ centre or it's an International Centre - and let's put the base
organisation in as:

	IAC.AQ

and any of the "various organisations based at the IAC in Christchurch that
participate in Antarctic programs" in as:

	XXX.AQ or XXX.IAC.AQ

We have more prospect of getting US and other organisations to do the right
thing with the '.AQ' domain if we go this way.

(Gruops at the IAC also might then gets lots of mail from people saying "Are you
in Antarctica, I need to talk to ..." and do something about persuading MERT to
fund the link down there.)

In article <BsFo7A.1yt@comp.vuw.ac.nz>, andy.linton@comp.vuw.ac.nz
 (Andy Linton) writes:

[bits deleted]

> Let's run this up the flagpole then. If IAC is to be "considered a domain
> for a group of organisations" whose function is Antarctic Research then let's
> not talk about the New Zealand International Antarctic Centre - it's either
> an NZ centre or it's an International Centre - and let's put the base
> organisation in as:
> 
> 	IAC.AQ
> 
> and any of the "various organisations based at the IAC in Christchurch that
> participate in Antarctic programs" in as:
> 
> 	XXX.AQ or XXX.IAC.AQ

I have suggested this to them (and INT); thus far they prefer using
NZ (to retain an NZ flavour) or INT (in which case they've
suggested a further break down to denote the location - as there
are likely to be other such collections of Antarctic research
groups based in other parts of the world).  Once I've had a little more
feedback on the NZ possibilities I'll query the INT maintainers and
ask the namedroppers if there's any problem using a national domain
when not a resident.
 
> We have more prospect of getting US and other organisations to do the right
> thing with the '.AQ' domain if we go this way.
> 
> (Gruops at the IAC also might then gets lots of mail from people saying "Are you
> in Antarctica, I need to talk to ..." and do something about persuading MERT to
> fund the link down there.)

We can always hope :-).  Yes AQ has appeal but at least the NSF
component of the IAC doesn't seem so keen on it so far, and I'll
need to check its kosher.

John

In article <1992Aug4.125522.9839@waikato.ac.nz>, john@waikato.ac.nz (John Houlker) writes:
|> We can always hope :-).  Yes AQ has appeal but at least the NSF
|> component of the IAC doesn't seem so keen on it so far, and I'll
|> need to check its kosher.

kosher?  What like usp.ac.nz? :-)

Isn't DNS admin supposed to be distributed.  It is entirely up to the
administrators of the .aq domain what goes under it (and the admins of .nz
what goes under there).

cheers
mark

In article <BsFs4J.8H0@comp.vuw.ac.nz>, mark@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Mark Davies)
 writes:
> 
> In article <1992Aug4.125522.9839@waikato.ac.nz>, john@waikato.ac.nz (John Houlker) writes:
> |> We can always hope :-).  Yes AQ has appeal but at least the NSF
> |> component of the IAC doesn't seem so keen on it so far, and I'll
> |> need to check its kosher.
> 
> kosher?  What like usp.ac.nz? :-)

There hangs a tale; we used usp.ac.nz as a temporary convenience
while we were asking for usp.int (since the USP is a multinational
organisation) - ominously, after a number of attempts over a long
while we had no response from the INT maintainers, and by then
usp.ac.nz was (no surprise) being used quite generally.  In the end
this attempt was abandoned and usp.fj created instead.  I have
warned the NSF that I've had difficulty contacting the INT people,
but given some recent comments in namedroppers I've some hopes that
a new request might succeed.

> Isn't DNS admin supposed to be distributed.  It is entirely up to the
> administrators of the .aq domain what goes under it (and the admins of .nz
> what goes under there).

I believe that's true but it is worth noting what others consider
sound (and ignoring what we don't agree with of course), but
I think AQ is somewhat unusual and it will be more important
to look to global views than is the case with normal national
domains.

Also note that there are some quite different views about the
purpose of the top level domains; one approach is that INT is some
sort of aberration and EDU, COM, GOV, MIL, NET, and ORG are
international/multinational domains, while US and all the other
national domains should be used for locationally defined private
names.  This may be one reason why some US agencies seem a little
slow making use of AQ perhaps.  The extreme postion here would I
suppose mean that the subdomains of NZ should correspond to
provinces and perhaps mobile addresses ranges.

John

In article <1992Aug4.143927.9842@waikato.ac.nz>, john@waikato.ac.nz
 (John Houlker) writes:

> In the end this attempt was abandoned and usp.fj created instead.

Oops, sorry - make that fj was created and MX entries defined
for usp.ac.fj.

John

In article <1992Aug4.143927.9842@waikato.ac.nz>, john@waikato.ac.nz (John Houlker) writes:
|> There hangs a tale; we used usp.ac.nz as a temporary convenience
|> while we were asking for usp.int (since the USP is a multinational
|> organisation) 

But surely usp.edu would have been the appropriate one, it is an educational
institution.  And dont claim that .edu implies US.  There are lots of
universities in Canada and other places that will argue against that one.

Getting back to the "International Antartic Centre", it seems to me that this
is an international centre and it is an antartic centre so one of iac.aq or
iac.int is more appropriate than iac.nz.

cheers
mark

In article <BsFwuH.EGH@comp.vuw.ac.nz>, mark@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Mark Davies)
 writes:
> 
> In article <1992Aug4.143927.9842@waikato.ac.nz>, john@waikato.ac.nz (John Houlker) writes:
> |> There hangs a tale; we used usp.ac.nz as a temporary convenience
> |> while we were asking for usp.int (since the USP is a multinational
> |> organisation) 
> 
> But surely usp.edu would have been the appropriate one, it is an educational
> institution.  And dont claim that .edu implies US.  There are lots of
> universities in Canada and other places that will argue against that one.

Indeed edu can be considered international/multinational (as
I stated in my final paragraph!): 

	Also note that there are some quite different views about the
	purpose of the top level domains; one approach is that INT is some
	sort of aberration and EDU, COM, GOV, MIL, NET, and ORG are
	international/multinational domains,

This is by no means a universal view or at least impression,
however, and it was not desired by the USP in particular (there are
Canadian universities in CA as well, and I suspect those in EDU are
there more as a matter of history than as multinational bodies or
in support of a global scope of EDU).  For many EDU gives the
impression of a US educational institutions, even if this is not
intended.  The multinational argument for these top levels would
suggest locating the IAC in something like GOV (c.f. MCMURDO.GOV);
I haven't suggested this yet but strictly it is valid - but I for
one would feel this misses something (or adds something we'd rather
not have).  Given the possible failure of INT and some concerns
about AQ (including those from the NSF), GOV and ORG are possibly
real candidates.

To the degree that INT can or might successfully make it obvious
that multinational entities are being described, it may yet perform
a useful function (e.g. we don't have NATO.MIL, not doubt again an
issue of impressions and sensitivities - btw the top level NATO is
essentially defunct).

> Getting back to the "International Antartic Centre", it seems to me that this
> is an international centre and it is an antartic centre so one of iac.aq or
> iac.int is more appropriate than iac.nz.

Thanks; more votes for them (or something like iacc.aq or iacc.int
to allow iaccpa.x for a possible site in Chile and the like).

John