"William X. Walsh" wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> That's a misnomer. Any perception of that is based on a fallacious
> understanding of the domain.
>
> [snip]
>
> .net is also an open unrestricted TLD.
And in another message:
>
> No. This was never the case. Always in RFC1591 .org was referred to
> as the place for anything that didn't fit elsewhere. Never was it
> referred to as a place for non-commercial or non-profit only.
Hi William,
Actually, what you say is not necessarily logically correct. Please note
the following.
While these are only recommendations for the usage of TLD's, RFC 1591
(Postel), pp.2-3 suggests:
COM - This domain is intended for commercial entities, that is
companies. This domain has grown very large and there is
concern about the administrative load and system performance if
the current growth pattern is continued. Consideration is
being taken to subdivide the COM domain and only allow future
commercial registrations in the subdomains.
EDU - This domain was originally intended for all educational
institutions. Many Universities, colleges, schools,
educational service organizations, and educational consortia
have registered here. More recently a decision has been taken
to limit further registrations to 4 year colleges and
universities. Schools and 2-year colleges will be registered
in the country domains (see US Domain, especially K12 and CC,
below).
NET - This domain is intended to hold only the computers of network
providers, that is the NIC and NOC computers, the
administrative computers, and the network node computers. The
customers of the network provider would have domain names of
their own (not in the NET TLD).
ORG - This domain is intended as the miscellaneous TLD for
organizations that didn't fit anywhere else. Some non-
government organizations may fit here.
INT - This domain is for organizations established by international
treaties, or international databases.
United States Only Generic Domains:
GOV - This domain was originally intended for any kind of government
office or agency. More recently a decision was taken to
register only agencies of the US Federal government in this
domain. State and local agencies are registered in the country
domains (see US Domain, below).
MIL - This domain is used by the US military.
Now, while it is described as a "catch-all" domain, .org should
technically only catch not-for-profit entities, exclusive of educational
sites and international treaty sites, as for-profit entities, educational
sites and international treaty sites should fall under .com (or .net if
network infrastructure), .edu and .int respectively. These TLD's were
intended to be mutually exclusive -- if you were a .com, you weren't a
.org. (for fans of set theory: |COM| + |NET| + |EDU| + |INT| + |ORG| =
|COM u NET u EDU u INT u ORG| should be true)
While a comment like this is probably synonymous with the "640k of RAM
ought to be enough for anybody" -- it was also the original intention that
a single company not hold more than one domain. Read: ABC Communications
has abccom.bc.ca -- we shouldn't need abccom.ca, abccomm.ca, abccomm.com,
et al.
n.b. Postel/Reynolds also recommend this and more in RFC920 (yes, this is
over 15 years old):
Minimum Size:
The domain must be of at least a minimum size. There is no
requirement to form a domain because some set of hosts is above
the minimum size.
Top level domains must be specially authorized. In general, they
will only be authorized for domains expected to have over 500
hosts.
The general guideline for a second level domain is that it have
over 50 hosts. This is a very soft "requirement". It makes sense
that any major organization, such as a university or corporation,
be allowed as a second level domain -- even if it has just a few
hosts.
Haven't things changed?!? We now often see 50 domains (or more) per one
host!
While it is nice to have standards to live by, they are [unfortunately]
not laws, though we would certainly like to make some of them laws...
(anyone else here want to get rid of spam altogether? see Hambridge /
Lunde: RFC 2635 (aka FYI 35))
Thanks for listening,
-kb
--
Kris Benson
ABC Communications
+1 (250)612-5270 x14
+1 (888)235-1174 x14
