Re: navigation system user-survey

Can't vouch for the OP but academic establishments in the uk have an "ac.uk" ending. gov.uk for goverment, co.uk for companies etc

Gotcha - wasn't aware of that (another way the EU wants to be "different", I guess.)

FloydR

More like another way that the US (of A) seems to ignore that the rest of the world exists.

.UK predates .US.

.EDU is traditionally US only.

The UK and EU aren't "different" about this:

# whois gov.us Domain Name: GOV.US Domain ID: D655022-US Sponsoring Registrar: REGISTRY REGISTRAR Domain Status: clientDeleteProhibited Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited Domain Status: clientUpdateProhibited Domain Status: inactive Registrant ID: NEUSTAR Registrant Name: NEUSTAR Registrant Address1: Loudoun Tech Center Registrant Address2: 45980 Center Oak Plaza Registrant City: Sterling Registrant State/Province: VA Registrant Postal Code: 20166 Registrant Country: United States Registrant Country Code: US

And predates all country and other extensions, by more than a decade. One of the original suffixes, along with .web, .com and .org. My comment has to do with the .ac versus .edu - seems silly. Of course, it's silly both ways - most US Universities don't register the .us suffix name.

FloydR

.edu has flip flopped a few times. First it was wide open, then it was US schools only and now it's wide open again. I think, I haven't check this week.

There's two schools of thoughs on domain naming: one side would like a globally consistant ontology so all names seem more or less the same while the other side wants what makes sense for their community and the rest of the world be damned. There is no resolution to this problem.

Even rigorously controlled namespaces have glitches: .edu is for post secondary schools but I found a beaty school in LA one that had one. Oy.

At the end of the day a domain name is an arbitrary string of characters that helps people remember the names of resources and nothing more can really be read into it.

.web? Huh?

.web An ending of an address for an Internet site that is about the World Wide Web. Example:

from

".web"? Sure you don't mean .net?

-- Larry

Floyd, once again, you're full of s*it. .web is an unofficial, newby, wanna-be TLD, only around since '95 or so.

The original six TLDs were .com, .edu, .gov, .mil. .net, and .org.

-- Larry (around since ARPAnet...)

My brain said .net, but fingers wrote .web... don't know why I didn't catch it on the 2nd posting.

FloydR

The reason I'm amused is this: the US government controls what top level domains exist in the "legacy" root zone file that defines what most people implicitly use. Some percent of the worlds population use what is known as "alternative" domain resources and there are many more top level domains that the USG recognizes.

.web is one of the oldest of these alternatve tlds, it's been run by Chris Ambler since 1996. It's expected to go live in the USG servers this spring.

I sorta coordinate this stuff for orsc.

; DiG 9.3.0 web. ns ;; global options: printcmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER

"unofficial" ?

There no such thing as "official". It's not like poeple make an affirmative choice when they sign up for a $30/mo interent account.

If you look very carefully at the history you'll find Jon Postel of IANA tellimg Ambler to go and deploy .WEB and can (with google) follow the machinations that led to an ICANN dominated by multinational intellectual property attornies stalling the whole process Jon started and which some people say, killed him. You'll also find Vint Cerf recognizing Ambler's .web at the 2000 Marina del Rey ICANN meeting.

You forgot .arpa, .uk and .nato. Discussion of all these can be found on the "message group" archives, the very first internail mailing list which goes back to the 70's and was run by Einar Stefferud, who incidentally is, along with Brian Reid and myself, is one of the guys behind ORSC.

As for .web being a "wanna be" I'd simply point out the tld does work and haw worked for longer than 95% of the ccTLDs. You just won't see it without using different dns servers than what the US government ans IBM's trademark lawyers want you to use.