Internet Domain Name Structure for .au

[Robert Elz]

    Date:        Sun, 8 Oct 1995 22:51:52 +1000
    From:        George.Bray@moreinfo.com.au (George Bray)
    Message-ID:  <v02130506ac9d767ea707@[203.12.129.11]>

First, I didn't actually realise I was talking to a mailing
list - I certainly have seen no messages on this list not
explicitly sent to me as well as the list.  So if anything
I said seems to make no sense in the context of some discussion,
that is why.  Unfortunately I don't have the time to be
added to yet another mailing list.



    So why not solve this problem by adding to the heirarchy
    - mag.au, prod.au, service.au etc.

I had actually considered some of that.  However I don't (usually)
create new sub-domains of .AU just because I think they may be
nice to have, I need a proposal first, some kind of demonstration
that there will be enough registrations to make it worth the
effort, and then someone willing to run the thing (it will not
be me, that I can guarantee).

The proposal should be for something reasonably general for this
level in the tree, ie: mag.au probably wouldn't work, but pub.au
might.   Picking a good name is often the hard part (pub.au
looks like it might be meant for hotels, so might not be best...)

The demonstration needs (usually) to show that there will be
many hundreds (at least) of registrations in the domain, and
possibly thousands.

The someone needs to have the time and resources to manage this,
and also the knowledge to make sure it is run properly, that is
to verify delegations, etc, and know they won't cause problems.
For many sub-domains, particularly those where some commercial
interest is involved, they also need to be free of potential
conflicts of interest (no matter what guarantees they give, or
how much they are trusted to abide by them).  Unfortunately that
often leaves out the ISPs for the major domains, and more
unfortunately, they tend to be the group that actually could
devote the resources needed to make it work.   The someone is
also always an individual (generally with the backing of
their employer).   AU sub-domains are delegated only to
individual humans, not organisations.

    The structure has been expanded to give associations their
    own place in the world (asn.au), why not individuals,

id.au exists already, though has been a little slow starting
(mostly because I took way too much time doing simple things
that should have been done in minutes - took months instead).

    products, services, publications etc?

These are not impossible, though personally I find it a little
hard to know what a product would do with a domain name.
    
    However, I can see that the domain name and URL structure are
    being used by everyone as pointers to all sorts of objects

Before you decide that allocating lots more domain names is
the way to solve all the URL related problems, you should also
be looking at the work being done with URNs URCs and various
other URXs I have forgotten.   With some of those, domain names
will basically never be seen by humans, and it is reasonably
likely that some of this will eventually replace URL's anywhere
people see them.   The domain name in the URL means that (proxy
servers apart) the information must be obtained from one particular
server (though disgusting DNS tricks can help) - ideally users
should be using names that allow their browser to select one of
many suitable servers to query.   Some of the newer naming schemes
have this property - they then clearly don't contain domain names.

When this happens, will having lots of domain names based on
products or services still make sense?

There will (one day, if someone ever appears to run it) an INC.AU
which will just be COM.AU with a different name (give people a
choice of where to go).   I had also considered a BIZ.AU (which
was going to be PROF.AU before I widened it) which would be broken
doen by business/profession/... categories, so law.biz.au
medical.biz.au car.biz.au ... in which people would be able to
register if that suited their needs.   Both of these (biz.au and
inc.au) would very definitely be alternatives to com.au - ie:
pick the one most suitable, and register in it alone (no
registering everywhere).   None of this will happen without
people willing to undertake the work, and comit to continuing
it for the long term (its no good being able to do it now, then
changing jobs in 6 months and discovering that the time to do it
no longer exists, and the new employer isn't interested).

kre